Northern SRM in Health Care Organizations

Northern Parklife, Inc., provider of Storage Resource Management (SRM) solutions, have seen an increase in demand from the from the health care sector, underscored by recent installations at Hawaii’s largest health care provider, a non-profit academic medical center and provider of clinical and hospital care, among other notable health care organizations who have selected Northern Storage Suite to manage their data.

Efficient and cost-effective storage of unstructured data, as well as EMRs (electronic medical records) has become an increasingly acute challenge given the widespread adoption of digital medical imaging technologies, the need to comply with state and local retention policies, HIPAA mandated disaster recovery regulations, and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) provisions – all factors driving the increased demand for the company’s flagship SRM solution, Northern Storage Suite.

Implementing electronic records and advances in medical imagery put pressure on existing storage capacity, which is further compounded by the the explosion of unstructured data. Healthcare organizations are already incurring higher management costs due to escalating data growth. Northern Storage Suite enables healthcare organizations to implement a data management strategy that allows IT administrators to manage the inflow of unstructured data, maximize storage utilization, plan for (as well as defer) capacity increases, assure data availability and keep IT costs under control.

"Operating efficiencies in today’s health care organization is almost by definition linked to the organizations ability to efficiently store the massive amounts of digitized diagnostic data, as well as the floods of unstructured data," says Jonas Areskoug, Northern’s CEO. "Our experience with some of the nation’s most forward-thinking health care organizations and medical centers points to the necessity of beginning with a strategy that incorporates best practices for backup and storage of medical images, and all types of digital information across the provider enterprise. Northern Storage Suite makes digitized diagnostic and unstructured data more manageable, efficient, reliable and cost-effective, playing a central role in improving the quality, safety, and efficiency of health care delivery."

Northern’s product, Northern Storage Suite, is a software solution that enables organizations to constrain data growth, align the value of data with the cost of storage, and extend the life of storage infrastructure. This is achieved through five areas of functionality: quotas, reporting & trending, internal billing, automation & migration, and an end-user portal that encourages self-management.

Integrating Northern Storage Suite
into an enterprise-wide EMR initiative enables providers to:

• Reduce redundancy, streamline backup and disaster recovery
• Assure fast access to stored data from any location at any time. Hospitals need fast access to recent diagnostic images, data required for surgeries or consultations, updated patient EMRs, and emails related to a patient’s current treatment.
• Anticipate future needs leveraging Northern Storage Suite’s reporting and trend analysis capabilities. As the environment grows in terms of remote offices (clinics, physicians’ offices, etc.), physical space requirements, and common file servers, Northern Storage Suite allows the IT organization to maximize existing storage infrastructure, defer new investments, and accommodate growth without impacting storage resource management and administration.

Northern recently received the coveted Challenger designation in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for the SRM market, outstripping other SRM vendors in its completeness of vision, its ability to execute, and its ability to identify and resolve customer pain points. Northern Storage Suite provides multi-platform support, seamlessly integrating with NAS devices and SANs; there are also specific versions of the suite for EMC Celerra and NetApp NAS.