Commercial Building Products - May 2015 - (Page 11)

healthcare data centers FEATURE confidentiality of electronic health records so far have slowed any largescale exodus to the cloud. What is not in question is the centrality of data to all phases of healthcare. "Healthcare facilities have become data centers with patients," said Bhavesh Patel, vice president, Global Marketing, ASCO Power Technologies, Florham Park, NJ. "Data digitization rules. Hospitals need to capture, manage, store, and protect more and more data. Patient histories, diagnoses, and prescriptions are examples. At the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance in Washington State, patients may see an oncologist, get medications from the pharmacy, and perhaps undergo an MRI or CAT scan during a single visit. All the data must be captured," he said. "Also, the business-end of healthcare facilities relies on data centers for capturing costs and revenue, maintaining employee records and payroll, and storing back-up data from personal computers, e-mails, and other electronic communication. Hospitals are at different stages of achieving all of that, of course, but all of them need to get there because it's mandated by law," Patel added. "As the healthcare industry evolves and strengthens its focus on preventive care, and as health organizations become more distributed in nature- with large campuses and regional networks-IT infrastructure is critical for the centralized management and storage of patient data. What used to be a paper-only industry is now completely paperless," said Justin Carron, global healthcare segment manager at Eaton, Cleveland, OH. "The data center is critical to the success of modern hospitals and to what Gartner Research, Stamford, CT, analysts call real-time healthcare systems (RTHS)," agreed James Cerwinski, director at Raritan Inc., Somerset, NJ. "Hospitals use hundreds of applications, ranging from the typical ones found in most businesses-e-mail, online portals, back-office applications, HR, and financials-to applications supporting the work done in labs, ERs, hospital floors, clinics, radiology, and in just about every corner of a hospital," Cerwinski explained. "According to one of Raritan's customers, Florida-based UF Health Shands, its most important application, out of more than 200, is the hospital-information system that supports all patient caregivers. Each day the system gathers information on caregiver-patient encounters, medical records, and every work order, such as lab work, in all of Shands' locations." MAJOR CONCERNS Security, reliability, and uptime are the major concerns facing hospital data centers, regardless of whether they are traditional onsite installations, co-located, or cloud based. "Energy efficiency is important, of course, and an inefficient data center will get someone's wrist slapped. Poor reliability and power availability, however, will get someone fired. It's that black and white," said Patel. "Mark Hungerford, the operating engineer at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA, told us, 'It's all about reliability. Everything, especially our data centers, is built to never go down,'" Patel related. "That's because the center's campus operations scream 'mission critical!' Data centers totaling 18,000 sq. ft. store colossal volumes of information produced by more than 200 research labs and advanced imaging facilities, cell monitoring and manufacturing operations, and specialized tools Top. A technician tracks operation of a facility's power system with the ASCO PowerQuest power and monitoring control system. Photo: ASCO that analyze and sequence DNA and RNA," he explained. According to ASCO's Patel, "Data centers for healthcare networks are particularly sensitive to interruptions. Data-center downtime costs more than $5,000 per minute and on average $500,000 per incident, according Above. A critical power management system (CPMS) helps management comply with healthcare data-center requirements by capturing data and producing automated reports for inspection. Photo: ASCO cbpmagazine.com MAY 2015 COMMERCI A L BUIL DING P RODUC T S 11 http://www.cbpmagazine.com

Commercial Building Products - May 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Commercial Building Products - May 2015