BridgeHead Software has joined forces with the European Centre of Expertise for the Health Care Industry EEIG to provide a unique data and storage management offering to European healthcare organisations known as the Shared Medical Archiving Solution (SMAS). SMAS is a fully managed, Cloud-based, archiving solution for all data - clinical and administrative - is independently audited by KPMG, providing healthcare organisations an added level of assurance that where their data resides is not only compliant, but will remain secure.
A number of factors make this solution innovative and unique for the healthcare industry. Firstly, unlike other offerings, SMAS enables hospitals to store, protect and share both the clinical and administrative data originating from disparate applications. Whether DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) images from radiology departments or scanned patient information, through to email or general file data such as documents and spreadsheets, the joint solution is equipped to manage the entire lifecycle of data within a hospital.
Secondly, SMAS will be fully audited end-to-end and certified by KPMG, as opposed to the more traditional approach of separately certifying only the individual elements. As a result, hospitals will not have to concern themselves with the regulatory and compliance issues normally associated with outsourcing the management of their data and can be confident that their information will remain secure.
Within the overall offering, BridgeHead's Healthcare Data Management (HDM) Solution plays the role of managing the data between a hospital's applications and the hardware on which the data is stored. As content is moved into the archive, the data is indexed (both meta-data and full-text indexing), making it easy for hospital staff to search for and access information, such as patient records, as and when needed. Data footprints within the archive can also be reduced through compression functionality in accordance with hospital policies. In addition, this offering can be used by healthcare organisations to facilitate a robust disaster recovery solution by using the Cloud-based archive as a secondary data centre to house copies of a hospital's data in the event of a disaster, outage, corruption or loss.
Klaus Aulenbacher, CEO of European Centre of Expertise for the Healthcare Industry EEIG, commented, "By bringing together best–of-breed providers of technology and services, such as BridgeHead Software and KPMG, we are able to offer hospitals a unique, comprehensive solution to effectively manage and protect all of their data, whether for the purposes of deep archive and/or as a disaster recovery solution. And, by fully auditing and certifying the solution, handling all of the legal and regulatory requirements necessary when outsourcing healthcare data, it dramatically reduces risk to customers and provides peace of mind. We are delighted to be working with BridgeHead Software in leveraging their Healthcare Data Management technology as part of this solution."
Jim Beagle, CEO and President at BridgeHead Software, added, "It's great to be part of such a forward thinking initiative. Hospitals are increasingly battling with the challenges of managing their ever-growing healthcare data. Solutions, such as SMAS, provide a real alternative to the more traditional, in-house data management approaches, which can be costly, time consuming and resource intensive. We’re delighted to work with such an innovative organisation such as the European Centre of Expertise for the Health Care Industry EEIG and look forward to helping them extend their offerings across Europe."
Following successful beta trials in Germany and Austria, the Cloud-based archiving solution is now being rolled out across Europe.
About BridgeHead Software
With 20 years' experience in data and storage management, and 10 years in healthcare, BridgeHead Software is trusted by over 1,000 hospitals worldwide.
Today, BridgeHead Software helps healthcare facilities overcome challenges stemming from rising data volumes and increasing storage costs while delivering peace of mind around how to STORE, PROTECT and SHARE clinical and administrative information.
BridgeHead's Healthcare Data Management (HDM) solutions are designed to work with any hospital's chosen applications and storage hardware, regardless of vendor, providing greater choice, flexibility and control over the way data is managed, now and in the future.
About the European Centre of Expertise for the Health Care Industry EEIG
The prime tasks of the European Centre of Expertise for the Health Care Industry include creating basic conditions for the cooperation between investors, companies, universities, authorities and trade associations on EU level and beyond this.
In addition, we support EU-wide promotional projects and plan own empirical research projects. Particularly innovative projects are also planned and carried out directly by us. After a scientific evaluation these are then assigned to our members.
A network of specialists enables companies to have access to other EU countries and supports them with economic processes. The European Centre of Expertise for the Health Care Industry, with the support of various private and public institutions, forms an interface to 500 organisations of European networks, including Chambers of Commerce, regional development agencies and technology centres, universities, industry and financial markets.