Data storage management vendors are likely to play a key role in assisting healthcare facilities to meet the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) deadline for security compliance. In order to make the most of this opportunity, vendors need to incorporate certain practices and product features that are in line with the HIPAA recommendations for patient record keeping. Partnering with other vendors that provide clinical information systems from the stage of product development and launching pilot projects at healthcare centers to check security compliance are also expected to prove beneficial for data storage vendors. They must also aim for full responsibility in maintaining data integrity and availability. This will enable them to win long-term maintenance contracts and realize more opportunities in healthcare markets.

This Frost & Sullivan research evaluates the key drivers and restraints in the data storage management markets. The study also analyzes opportunities and challenges with respect to the storage hardware and software segments and provides strategies to assist participants in designing high-impact action plans.

Lack of Integration between DICOM and XML Standards Proves Challenging

Given the co-existence of graphical, text, and numerical data in healthcare facilities, data storage management vendors need to ensure that the specific requirements of each data type are catered to in an organized manner. Digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) platform is vital to the successful implementation of radiology and picture archiving and communications systems (PACS). Similarly, extensible mark-up language (XML) proves essential for real-time access to electronic medical records (EMR). "Integration between DICOM and XML standards is absolutely necessary for consolidated data storage solutions in healthcare settings and comprehensive access to patient records," says the analyst of the research. "This integration must be made compatible for Web applications, as well."

Exponential Growth in Healthcare Data to Boost Demand for Storage Management Solutions

Healthcare practitioners operate in one of the most data intensive environments. It is estimated that the volume of healthcare data is increasing by more than four times every two years and this is also expected to double every nine months. Most of the demand for high storage requirements is from medical images, patient records, and hospital administration related data. "Patient records in particular must be stored for very long periods of time and will never attain a ’zero level’ like other industry data," explains the analyst. "In order to really stand out in the market, data storage management vendors must, therefore, provide highly scalable storage solutions to healthcare providers."

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