Three suggestions for large data application in medical industry

From the current situation, to achieve the integration of hospital information platform, technology and products without any obstacles, the most critical is the user's concept can be changed. In fact, the cost of hospitals to purchase medical professional equipment is higher than the investment in it. Hospital leaders must change the past. IT department is the concept of cost center, the development of hospital is inseparable from it. A hospital CIO told reporters: "A lot of people think that the bank's IT system is very important, in fact, the hospital's IT system more importance, because the bank's IT system if the downtime, the loss may be money, and the hospital IT system if there is a problem, it is likely to relate to human life ”

Three development stages of hospital informatization

In the hospital Information Age 1.0, IT systems are built around the application, a business system is usually configured with a set of independent hardware, software, thus forming a large number of information islands. In the 1.0 era of hospital informatization, providing support for PACs, RIS and his service system is the core of hospital informatization.

In the 2.0 era of hospital informationization, the construction of hospital informatization gradually shifted to the establishment and popularization of electronic cases, and the prerequisite of constructing electronic case system is to realize seamless connection and information sharing of RIS, PACs and his, and to realize integrated access and control. In the hospital Information Age 2.0, IT infrastructure integration is the key, but also the basis of data management and utilization. At present, many hospitals are exploring new information development path: First, establish an integrated infrastructure platform, and then set up a unified hospital information integration platform, realize the interconnection of each application system, and finally achieve unified, integrated resource management. Tianjin Haihe Hospital is actively exploring this aspect.

Ma Mingzai, general manager of Health and Life sciences in the Asia Pacific region, said: "Two-thirds of our existing customers have proposed the need for infrastructure integration, and some hospitals even put forward the requirements for building a whole-yard integrated infrastructure platform." Infrastructure consolidation is driven not by HDS, but by the actual needs of the user. The HDS solution is just right to meet the needs of the user's consolidated storage architecture. ”

In the medical profession, the demonstration effect of the typical user is very obvious. For example, the Wuxi second People's Hospital builds a sustainable healthcare intelligence information platform using the HDS VSP high end storage and the HCP (Hitachi Content Platform) archiving program. Whether the scale, responsiveness or information level, Wuxi the second People's Hospital in Wuxi are the top of the local. Influenced by it, many hospitals in Wuxi and even throughout East China have opted for HDS solutions.

HDS China technical director Uchy said: "In the medical industry, PACS data accounted for the total number of hospital data 70%~80%, the storage, management and use of these unstructured data has become a focus of the current hospital informatization." "Statistics show that only one community hospital or a medium-sized pharmaceutical company can accumulate terabytes or even petabytes of data. For most successful medical institutions, the use of large data has become a key strategy for increasing productivity, improving nursing standards, enhancing competitiveness, accelerating growth and innovation. In order to integrate the large data of different departments or different life science systems in hospitals to achieve the fullest information search and sharing, the ideal storage architecture must be an integrated system capable of processing block data, files and content, with large capacity and high performance.

In the 2.0 stage of hospital informatization, the enterprise adopts HDS high performance hnas can solve the problem of large data processing performance completely. The in-depth excavation and analysis of large data is the main task of the 3.0 phase of hospital informatization. The goal of Hospital Informatization 3.0 is to build a sound regional medical system, which relies heavily on cloud computing technology.

Three technical levels of digital medicine

In the hospital informatization 2.0 stage, "Conformity" is a key word that runs through always. From the storage point of view, the goal of hospital Informatization 2.0 can be decomposed into three parts-data storage, data management and data utilization, which can be implemented by stages.

In the first phase, the goal of data storage is to build a unified storage platform for hospitals. Here the "unification" includes two meanings: First, the former dispersed information islands through virtualization and other technologies to effectively integrate, constitute a unified storage pool, to maximize the utilization of storage resources; second, support structured and unstructured data with a unified platform. Based on the above considerations, HDS has put forward the idea of "supporting all types of data with a platform" and put it into practice.

"The biggest advantage of the HDS consolidation solution is that it is an integrated platform that supports all types of data and enables the pooling of storage resources." "The essence of cloud computing is the pooling of resources," Uchy said. Both high-end storage System HDS VSP, or high-end HDS HUS series, can help users build a unified pool of storage resources. HDS's high-performance Hnas and HCP archiving solutions are data access channels built on top of the unified storage resource pool. Today, many hospitals are unable to share resources because they use a set of devices when they build a PACS system, and they use a different set of devices when they file a data archive, and the devices are not interconnected. ”

From the customer base of HDS in the healthcare industry, some large tri-armour hospitals typically use HDS VSP to build san+nas integrated systems, sans for his database application systems, and NAS can process unstructured data such as PACS data. Some small and medium-sized hospitals will use the HDS HUS series or the AMS2000 series. Since the traditional storage architecture can not meet the needs of hospital application, the first affiliated Hospital of Zhongshan University hopes to integrate and store the data of his, PACs and other key application systems through the transformation of the data system, and to make full use of the original storage equipment to realize investment protection. Using the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform VM's powerful storage virtualization capabilities, HDS not only helps the first affiliated hospital in Sun Yat-sen University build a San+nas integration architecture, but also integrates the existing storage facilities of other vendors, The formation of a unified storage resource pool, not only to facilitate online expansion, but also achieve unified management and deployment.

The second phase is to achieve more efficient data management. Hospitals, regardless of size, need to build a unified pool of storage resources. On this basis, the hospital can establish a data management layer, that is, data access channel. Hospital data can be divided into two categories: a kind of PACS data, that is, unstructured data, mainly including images, files, and other types of non-PACS data, that is, database data, such as his system data. In fact, the storage of structured data has been resolved while building a unified storage pool, and for the storage of unstructured data, high-performance solutions like Hnas are needed.

PACS data is the most typical unstructured data. In recent years, with the growth of PACs data, traditional PC server and low-end disk array solution can not meet the needs of data access. As the doctor reads, the system calls the data more slowly and the data is backed up longer. Therefore, the use of dedicated High-performance file storage devices to replace the traditional PC server and universal storage device is the trend. A third hospital information division director told reporters: "If not early scientific planning data storage and archiving infrastructure, hospital data will be like a runaway Mustang, difficult to control." ”

HDS introduces file-and content-oriented solutions (FCS) to meet the storage and management needs of PACS systems. FCS mainly includes Hnas and HCP. Uchy said: "In the market, general NAS abound." Although it can meet the needs of data sharing, performance, especially throughput, is slightly inferior to that of dedicated NAS. Hnas is a dedicated high-performance NAS device, it uses FPGA programmable controller, the internal includes a large number of CPUs, can fully meet the user demand for high bandwidth. Hnas is mainly applicable to audio and video in the radio and television industry and medical image access applications. "The first affiliated Hospital of Zhongshan University has greatly improved the doctor's application experience after adopting Hnas." In the past, it may take several minutes for a doctor to transfer a CT, but now it takes only a few seconds to complete the hnas of the CT tablet.

The amount of data in a PACS system is usually terabytes. In addition to the high access performance required for storage, PACs also require that data be stored and archived in a timely manner in order to simplify data management while reducing costs. The first affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University adopts HDS solution to build the disaster tolerance system of the two places, and its total data reaches 400~500TB. "For hospitals, the biggest benefit of archiving is the effective management of historical data." "Uchy For example," If the user has 100TB data, which 80TB is historical data, if not archived, then each data query, the system will retrieve 100TB of online data, which will directly affect query performance; If you archive 80TB historical data into near-line storage, Then the system can search the data by retrieving 20TB of online data, thus improving the efficiency of data query. ”

In the HDS existing customer base, the use of HCP customers have not adopted more than Hnas, which is not enough historical data in many hospitals have a certain relationship. In addition, the Hnas itself has automatic tiering to migrate historical data to low-cost SATA disks, although its performance without a professional archiving program HCP High, but for the General Hospital is enough. Uchy says: "Hcp uses object-type storage based on CDMI (Cloud data Management Interface) cloud storage, and when a file enters HCP, HCP automatically generates a metadata (metadata), and packaged with this file as an archive target. metadata, like the directory of books, is the index and basis of data retrieval, callback. Because of the metadata, HCP's query efficiency is greatly improved. ”

The third stage, the use of data. Data such as electronic medical records and personal health records are accompanied by a lifetime. The Ministry of Health "medical records management provisions" clearly stipulates: the door (urgent) record of the preservation of records, since the patient's last visit from the date of not less than 15. The reason why the relevant departments have to retain these data for a long time is because these medical information has the value of reuse. Data utilization becomes possible on the basis of data storage and data management. HDS's HCR (Hitachi clinical Repository) effectively leverages the metabase built in the archive process to facilitate data query and callback. On this basis, the hospital can also be the search for in-depth data mining. ”

Uchy said: "HCR is a foreign medical industry software developers in our HDDs content retrieval gateway based on the development of a set of management software." Without HCR, application developers would have to do more than two development to query and invoke data. HCR in China has not been promoted, the reason is that, on the one hand, most Chinese hospitals are still in the data storage and management phase, there is not much demand for data utilization; On the other hand, many hospitals do not have enough data accumulation, so it is not necessary to dig and analyze the data. However, with the improvement of hospital informatization level, as well as the establishment of electronic medical records and personal health files, hospitals will have more demand in data mining and analysis. ”

The "number" three recommendations

At present, the information level of each hospital has very big difference. In the information aspect first step and has the certain data accumulation hospital to the information system conformity has the urgent demand. Some hospitals, represented by the first affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, have clearly put forward the requirement of establishing the integrated information system of the whole hospital. "In the development of hospital informatization to a certain extent, the integration of information systems is an inevitable choice." The electronic medical record system relies on the integrated and efficient information infrastructure. "Uchy said," before, the hospital's information system is based on the business system, and now take the patient's needs as the center, that is, people-oriented building integrated information system, in the implementation of the underlying IT infrastructure integration, resource sharing at the same time to achieve the interoperability of the application systems. Without the integration of whole-hospital information systems, it is impossible to build an electronic medical record system, nor is it efficient data management and data utilization. ”

In order to help the hospital to realize the integration of information system better, Uchy put forward the following suggestions.

First, consider the input of hospital informatization from the angle of overall cost of ownership. The hospital can refer to the concept of the storage economics proposed by HDS and correctly analyze the relationship between fixed capital (CAPEX) and operating cost (OPEX). The hospital should not simply look at the purchase cost of equipment, but should combine the purchasing cost with the long-term operation and maintenance cost of equipment. In the hospital Information Age 2.0, the large-scale integration of information systems, the initial equipment investment may be higher, but given the next 5 years of operation costs, the overall cost of ownership relative to the integration before or have been saved.

Second, if enterprises adhere to the idea of hospital information 1.0 for different applications to establish an independent information system, technically is also feasible. But the establishment of electronic medical records and regional medical treatment is the general trend, and the prerequisite to achieve this goal is to carry out system integration. System integration is sooner or later. No matter from the application demand or the technical maturity to measure, now is the best time to realize the integration of information systems.

Third, the voice of the hospital CIO has been enhanced today. The hospital Dean considers more whether the business can operate safely and smoothly without noticing the specifics of the information system behind the application. One of the CIO's responsibilities is to tell the Dean about the needs of it, so that the hospital information really become "top" project, in the leadership of the full attention and recognition, so that it may continue to improve the level of hospital information.