Medical imaging cloud application

Medical image storage and backup involves transferring medical image data from the existing hospital data center to other campuses or third-party cloud platforms via a network. This enables PACS application backup, image data disaster recovery backup, and permanent storage, ensuring that medical institutions can continue to provide stable services even in the event of natural disasters, hard drive failures, hacker attacks, or human damage. "Image cloud storage" refers to storing massive amounts of medical image data in the cloud, enabling cloud storage and archiving of images, multi-point disaster recovery backup, and permanent storage. This addresses current challenges related to image data storage and disaster recovery backup.
Image cloud storage is divided into two types: data-level disaster recovery and application-level disaster recovery:
1. Image data-level disaster recovery: Focuses on image data. After a disaster, the disaster recovery service platform uses network-based data replication tools to achieve asynchronous/synchronous data transmission between the production center and the disaster recovery center, ensuring that the customer's original business data remains intact.

2. Image application-level disaster recovery: Builds an application-level disaster recovery system on the basis of data-level disaster recovery. This involves building a separate application system and backup network system in the disaster recovery center. In the event of a production environment failure, the disaster recovery center system directly takes over the application to continue operation, minimizing system downtime and ensuring business continuity.

Hospital HIS, CIS, and PACS systems generate a large amount of outpatient data, clinical data, user clinical treatment data, and hospital operational management data daily. Data security protection is paramount for hospital information systems; loss of data would severely impact the hospital's normal production and operation.
Cloud storage of images enables "offsite disaster recovery backup of image data," "historical image archiving," and "PACS application-level backup," helping hospitals ensure the security of their production operation systems and data.

Medical Image Cloud Storage Disaster Recovery Backup Architecture

Image Cloud Archiving: For hospitals with deployed PACS, where the hospital PACS storage space is insufficient to meet the needs of the rapidly growing data, especially image data, it is recommended to store frequently accessed data locally and archive historical data in the cloud. That is, on the basis of the hospital PACS, lease third-party storage to expand storage space. To ensure data integrity and reliability, it is recommended to deploy or lease two or more image cloud centers.

Offsite Disaster Recovery Backup of Image Data: For hospitals with deployed PACS, this does not affect the existing system. Data is backed up to the cloud and restored on demand after local damage. To ensure the reliability of hospital data, offsite storage devices are deployed to back up hospital data, enabling rapid business recovery and massive data recovery.

PACS Application-Level Backup: For hospitals with complete information systems, a disaster recovery PACS is deployed to prevent business interruption. After a failure of the primary PACS system, the disaster recovery PACS system can take over application-level disaster recovery, improving the hospital's business continuity in the event of a PACS system failure. The primary data center and the disaster recovery data center can choose between active-active or active-passive operating modes.

National Hospital Information Data Backup and Recovery Standard Table

Industry Status
According to IDC's vertical industry brief, the amount of medical image storage data is expected to double in five years, making it one of the fastest-growing industries. Technological innovation and the rapid growth in medical and technical examination volumes have led to an explosive growth in medical clinical data, with image data accounting for the largest portion of hospital data, approximately 80% to 90%. Globally, more than 450 PB of image data is added annually. According to statistics from HC3i China Digital Healthcare Network, in 2016, 84% of hospitals in China had data volumes of 10 TB or more, with 42% of hospitals having data volumes in the 100 TB to 1 PB range, and 17% having data volumes already reaching the PB level. General medical institutions in China generate 1 TB to 20 TB of medical data annually, while large medical institutions generate as much as 300 TB to 1 PB annually.

According to national regulations on the preservation of electronic medical records, medical image data, as a part of electronic medical records, must be kept by medical institutions for at least 15 years from the date of the patient's last visit. Statistics show that 84% of hospitals invest more than 200,000 yuan in data management, 33% invest between 500,000 and 1 million yuan, and 17% invest between 1 and 2 million yuan, and 2 million yuan or more.

Image data accounts for more than 80% of all hospital data, and image storage volume is expected to double in five years. Cloud computing and cloud storage services have the advantages of low barriers to entry, easy access, and effective reduction of customer investment. With the in-depth development of cloud computing, cloud disaster recovery services will inevitably become a trend. The most obvious advantage of using cloud computing for image data disaster recovery (cloud disaster recovery) is that it requires less investment and yields faster results. Cloud computing for disaster recovery of image data offers long storage times, large storage space requirements, and heavy storage burdens for hospitals.

Business Opportunities

A twin data center in the same city involves establishing two data centers in the same city or nearby cities that can independently support the operation of key systems. Both centers have essentially equivalent business processing capabilities and synchronize data in real time through high-speed links. Under normal circumstances, they can share the operation of business and management systems and can switch operations. In the event of a disaster, they can switch to disaster recovery with minimal data loss to maintain continuous business operation. Typically, twin data centers in the same city are mainly used for application-level backup. An offsite backup center is a backup disaster recovery center established in a different city, used for backing up data from the twin data centers. When the twin data centers fail due to natural disasters or other reasons, the offsite disaster recovery center can use the backup data to restore business operations. Offsite disaster recovery can protect against fires, building damage, and other disasters, as well as wars, earthquakes, and floods.

For twin application-level disaster recovery centers in the same city, the distance between the main center and the disaster recovery center should be less than 100 km. Offsite disaster recovery centers must not be in the same power grid, the same river basin, or the same seismic zone, and must be more than 300 km apart. This means that a hospital must maintain both a data center and a disaster recovery center, which is a huge challenge for any medical institution, especially for small and medium-sized hospitals and primary medical institutions.

A comprehensive security architecture based on a cloud platform meets the data disaster recovery requirements of "twin data centers in the same city and offsite backup centers." Building a data disaster recovery center requires high levels of funding and technical expertise from hospitals, with significant upfront investment involving construction projects, machine room supporting projects, IT system investment, and communication network equipment investment. However, the resource utilization rate of data disaster recovery centers is low, and they are mostly idle, resulting in an imbalance between the total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment (ROI). Building a disaster recovery center is not something every hospital is willing or able to undertake. With the increasing demand for disaster recovery, the maturity of disaster recovery technology, and the continuous improvement of relevant regulations, disaster recovery outsourcing is becoming a trend.

The medical imaging workstation effectively meets the above requirements. It facilitates hospitals, doctors, and patients, enabling quick access to examination results and convenient film viewing, archive viewing, saving, and archiving, improving case query, statistics, and management functions. Guangzhou Rencheng Medical has stood out with over ten years of experience in medical equipment maintenance, collaborating with hospitals to understand doctors' needs. The developed imaging workstation serves hospitals, doctors, and patients well. Rencheng Imaging Workstation is now recruiting national agents and distributors, providing 24-hour After-sale Service. Welcome to contact us anytime.

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