Kom Networks Teaming With RamSoft

KOM Networks, Inc., provider of secure storage solutions for compliant data protection and retention announced a partnership with RamSoft, Inc., developer of RIS, PACS and Teleradiology solutions, to offer a DICOM compliant secure storage solution for diagnostic imaging.

The solution, also known as diKOMpliance Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA), will provide a cost-effective, scalable and WORM secure VNA to meet image related interoperability, meaningful use and ACO requirements. This IHE-compliant and DICOM conformable offering will be available exclusively through KOM Networks and its KOMunity Channel Network.

Today’s healthcare organizations face significant challenges managing disparate imaging systems and applications. Traditional Radiology / PACS and departmental image data silos create integration obstacles, making it difficult to share images from different DICOM modalities and to integrate those images with HL7 text data. These difficulties are further compounded by strict HIPAA and HITECH requirements for privacy and secure long-term retention of images as part of the patient’s electronic medical record (EMR), meaningful use incentives, and chain of custody enforcement for business associates and sub-contractors. Legacy solutions and applications often impede progress towards meeting meaningful use goals by making it difficult to integrate systems, switch vendors or implement new applications without going through painful, expensive conversions or integrations. Together, these factors can hinder access to critical information, drive up healthcare costs, and negatively impact quality of care.

diKOMpliance VNA is a solution that gives customers a regulatory and DICOM compliant option for storing, routing and safeguarding their valuable RIS and PACS data; a solution that is deployed in their existing environment (physical, hybrid or virtual), and on their choice of storage (NAS, SAN or VM).

Control your data and your options.
Hospitals and clinics are free to use the diagnostic imaging and storage technology of choice. Any combination of DICOM or non-DICOM imaging modalities from any vendor is supported, freeing the organization from vendor lock-in and expanding their options to implement the optimal solutions for meeting all of their imaging needs. With diKOMpliance VNA, there is no need for data conversions, complex integrations or a requirement to purchase additional storage. Use what you have, acquire what you want, and deploy it.

Unify, share and collaborate.
The diKOMpliance VNA offers a solution in cross-platform compatibility for compliant medical image lifecycle management. It provides a secure ubiquitous imaging content repository that unifies images and documents across multiple vendor systems, departments, specialties and locations into a single VNA. Imaging data can be shared across internal departments, external organizations or remote locations. All imaging data is centralized online, secure and available within the Electronic Medical Record (EMR), improving clinical decision-making, enhancing quality of care, eliminating duplicate studies, and speeding up treatment for patients.

New breed of compliance
The advanced security, privacy and replication features of the diKOMpliance VNA solution elevate the level of security and compliance for imaging data and PHI. Traditional PACS or RIS Archive solutions claim to be storage neutral and/or rely on proprietary and expensive storage solutions to address HIPAA security and privacy requirements. In some cases vendors attempt to compensate for their lack of data security enforcement through the promotion of disk encryption capabilities.

In reality, these do not prevent data corruption, system tampering or malware that can destroy the data while the system is running. Disk encryption is used for physical security and only safeguards the data when the disks are accessed. Encryption will not protect data from malware and corruption. Other vendors may use proprietary CAS solutions that lock the data, and lock the customer into vendor-specific configurations with no reasonably cost-effective mechanism to upgrade or migrate in the future. diKOMpliance shatters all these outdated approaches with a secure solution that can be deployed in virtualized environments to secure, protect and preserve images on any storage hardware. It virtually eliminates data vulnerability all by itself.

Security everyone needs.
All data (images, documents, reports, etc.) stored with diKOMpliance is stamped with a seal of authenticity and immediately protected from any internal or external threat to that data for as long as it is retained. diKOMpliance can prevent modification, deletion or corruption from malicious acts or accidental risks even from IT administrators with full permissions. Nothing and no one can threaten the information stored in a diKOMpliance secure storage volume. The solution enables secure image lifecycle management and strengthens audits by controlling immutability, retention, access, and secure NIST-compliant destruction on a file-by-file basis.

Reduce Costs
This solution works to reduce healthcare costs by unlocking the potential of cost-effective scalable storage. It protects PACS and RIS system investments by consolidating diagnostic imaging data while meeting meaningful use objectives for interoperability and assuring HIPAA compliance for privacy, authenticity, security and retention. By using industry standards, equipment acquisition and system integration costs go down, while future system changes are easier and less costly to implement. IT costs are reduced and operational work flows streamlined with a diKOMpliance centralized secure image repository.

“Both KOM Networks and RamSoft share a commitment to open standards,” indicates Kamel Shaath, CTO, KOM. “Our collaboration brings an integrated compliant solution based on DICOM and IHE standards to our healthcare customers that will meet their needs for a true vendor neutral archive capable of providing tamperproof protection and compliant retention of imaging data.”

“The integration of our solutions solves a wide range of problems for our healthcare customers,” said Marilyn Solano, sales and marketing director, RamSoft. “KOMpliance adds a flexible platform and agnostic WORM secure vendor-neutral archive to our RIS, PACS and Teleradiology solutions, adding value to existing imaging modalities and infrastructure while lowering the costs associated with sharing, managing and fully protecting image data for regulatory compliance. We are excited about partnering with KOM Networks to address the needs of our customers.“