Patient data matters. In today’s society, the healthcare industry is under constant scrutiny from patients, regulators and insurance providers to get it right. The Beatson Institute were facing stricter guidelines on the collection, processing and storage of data under GDPR.
GDPR has significantly increased the penalty for noncompliance. The cost of any gap in healthcare data is measured not only in the loss of time and money but also in human lives.
New treatments and the rising costs of patient care has resulted in increased spending across the industry. Technical demands for healthcare are rapidly being redefined, and data management continues to be a high priority for healthcare facilities.
Importance of backup and DR in healthcare
There is simply no tolerance for downtime in healthcare organisations. When data is unavailable, organisations must have the ability to instantly recover it to maintain compliance, ensure productivity, meet consumer demands and — most importantly — save lives.
Downtime, hybrid data environments, complying with GDPR laws around data protection, and disaster recovery, are just some of the data challenges healthcare organisations and their IT departments struggle with today. Another growing challenge is the rise in ransomware attacks hitting the UK healthcare industry, such as the WannaCry cyber-attack of May 2017 that led to a devasting 19,500 cancelled appointments and left 600 GP surgeries without their IT systems.
The healthcare IT infrastructure must be stable and agile to safeguard and protect the growing amount of sensitive data held. How? With bulletproof backup and disaster recovery.
Innovation in healthcare increased data volumes
Healthcare IT teams are inundated, whether that be with the demand for non-stop access, the no tolerance for downtime policy or the management of data across hybrid environments. In addition, rapid innovation in diagnostic and treatment technologies has dramatically increased data volumes, leading to other accessibility demands from both professionals and patients who expect ready access.
As healthcare organisations become increasingly digitised, they are more exposed to potential outages and downtime whether caused by criminal attacks, human error, computer glitches or natural events. Having a backup and DR strategy in place is essential.
The Beatson Institute Case Study
The Beatson Institute saved time, money and resources with Backup Systems. This in turn drastically increased productivity allowing them to focus attention on their vital research in the fight against cancer. Having a robust backup strategy was essential in ensuring no major incidents such as the loss of data or their business-critical application would set back this valuable research.
They needed a scalable solution, one that would be easy to use and drastically reduce the amount of time spent on backup, whilst meeting Beatson’s unique business needs.
With Backup Systems Managed Service, the Beatson was able to reduce the resource-intensive aspects of performing and managing backup and disaster recovery. Another invaluable bonus was being able to protect the sensitive nature of the data collated and stored, with Backup Systems the Beatson selected and sourced their own hardware and ensured their sensitive data remained on-site.
The backup solution provided simplified processes, fulfilling The Beatson Institute’s backup needs with one low-cost powerful solution.
Data Backup Benefits to healthcare
Having a robust backup and disaster recovery strategy in place is essential within healthcare organisations. Backup Systems can help you to maintain data privacy with built-in, end-to-end encryption to safeguard patient and employee data. With zero tolerance for downtime, organisations must provide high-speed recovery of data within minutes. And built-in disaster recovery not only saves time and money but also ensures GDPR compliance and business continuity when disaster may strike.
Our Managed Service meets the requirements of today’s healthcare industry by modernising and automating backup and disaster recovery and ensuring a bulletproof backup strategy. Ensure your systems are protected against disaster and cyber-attacks, and most importantly that patient and sensitive data are always safe and secure.
