BridgeHead, EMC and Oblak Together

BridgeHead Software Ltd, in healthcare data management, announced a partnership with Oblak.bg, a cloud and IT services provider and EMC Corporation.

Together the three companies will offer hospitals in Bulgaria and, in the near term, the rest of the Balkans, an alternative option to expensive PACS storage upgrades by assisting with the long-term storage, protection and sharing of radiology images – all in the cloud.

Built on EMC’s Isilon storage platform, Oblak will provide BridgeHead’s HealthStore, the first Independent Clinical Archive (ICA) – also referred to as a next generation vendor neutral archive (VNA) – to the Bulgarian healthcare market. HealthStore offers a single software environment where hospitals can store and protect all of their radiology images as well as other clinical and non-clinical data from across the healthcare enterprise and make it available, through sharing, to those that need it, when they need it, at the point of care.

“EMC and BridgeHead Software are already working together in a number of key healthcare accounts in EMEA,” said Wolfgang Mertz, CTO office, Isilon. “Our partnership has again proven successful in the form of our joint solution with Bulgarian company Oblak. This configuration of EMC’s advanced storage platform, Isilon, together with BridgeHead’s leading independent clinical archive, HealthStore, and the extensive cloud hosting and services offered by Oblak, is set to offer a total data management solution across the Bulgarian healthcare market and that of its neighboring countries.”

“In Bulgaria, one of the biggest expenditures for a hospital is upgrading the PACS system; procurement cycles are arduous and time consuming,” said Dimo Simeonov, CEO, Oblak. “By transferring the data into BridgeHead’s HealthStore, rather than upgrading the storage capacity of the PACS system, a hospital no longer needs to undertake lengthy procurement processes as the cost of the VNA is under the threshold. Therefore, this cloud alternative offers significant financial benefits and also saves precious time for the hospital, which in turn improves patient care. For example, the radiology department no longer needs to train its staff on how to use and maintain the system, it is now fully hosted and managed on their behalf so more attention is put back into front-line services.“

“We are delighted to partner with Oblak and EMC in Bulgaria, as this is an exciting and important new geographic opportunity for us,” said Andrew Carr, director of alliances, EMEA, BridgeHead. “Hospitals realise that it is too costly to keep pushing the storage limits of their PACS system, and it is no longer viable, or indeed necessary, to store their data on expensive primary storage. Utilising BridgeHead’s VNA in the Oblak cloud environment, the hospital can store any data – from medical images and clinical reports through to scanned patient records – and have it instantly available at the time of need.“