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Design and Implementation of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Solution for Radiology PACS

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Abstract

In the digital era of radiology, picture archiving and communication system (PACS) has a pivotal role in retrieving and storing the images. Integration of PACS with all the health care information systems e.g., health information system, radiology information system, and electronic medical record has greatly improved access to patient data at anytime and anywhere throughout the entire enterprise. In such an integrated setting, seamless operation depends critically on maintaining data integrity and continuous access for all. Any failure in hardware or software could interrupt the workflow or data and consequently, would risk serious impact to patient care. Thus, any large-scale PACS now have an indispensable requirement to include deployment of a disaster recovery plan to ensure secure sources of data. This paper presents our experience with designing and implementing a disaster recovery and business continuity plan. The selected architecture with two servers in each site (local and disaster recovery (DR) site) provides four different scenarios to continue running and maintain end user service. The implemented DR at University Hospitals Health System now permits continuous access to the PACS application and its contained images for radiologists, other clinicians, and patients alike.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the valuable suggestions made by Marcus Torngrip, PACS support specialist at UH.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, University Hospitals Case Medical Center, 11100 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH, 44106, USA

    Bahar Mansoori

  2. University Hospitals Case Medical Center, 11100 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH, 44106, USA

    Beverly Rosipko & Karen K. Erhard

  3. Department of Radiology, University Hospitals Case Medical Center, Case Western University School of Medicine, 11100 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH, 44106, USA

    Jeffrey L. Sunshine

Authors
  1. Bahar Mansoori
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  2. Beverly Rosipko
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  3. Karen K. Erhard
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  4. Jeffrey L. Sunshine
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeffrey L. Sunshine.

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Mansoori, B., Rosipko, B., Erhard, K.K. et al. Design and Implementation of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Solution for Radiology PACS. J Digit Imaging 27, 19–25 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-013-9625-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-013-9625-4

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