For Healthcare Providers: How All-Flash Storage in EHR and VDI Can Lower Costs and Improve Quality of Care

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1 For Healthcare Providers: How All-Flash Storage in EHR and VDI Can Lower Costs and Improve Quality of Care WHITE PAPER Table of Contents The Benefits of Flash for EHR...2 The Benefits of Flash for VDI...3 What to Look for in an All-Flash Solution for Healthcare Providers...4 Taking the Next Step...4 Healthcare providers are facing significant pressure to upgrade and modernize their underlying technology infrastructures to support initiatives such as evidence-based care and advanced disease management processes, all while maintaining the security levels of patient records and handling a variety of other critical challenges. At the same time, budgets remain constrained and IT leaders are under the gun to make a compelling business case for each new technology investment. In the face of these ongoing pressures, healthcare IT decision makers are turning to all-flash storage as one of their most important go-to technologies, particularly for mission-critical applications such as electronic health records (EHR) and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). The performance and availability gains provided by all-flash storage enable important improvements in patient care and clinical efficiencies. What s more, with the right solution in place, allflash technology can deliver major reductions in total cost of ownership (TCO) for healthcare providers of almost any size. A TECHTARGET WHITE PAPER

2 How All-Flash Storage in EHR and VDI Can Lower Costs and Improve Quality of Care To get a sense of the extent of improved results and cost savings that can be achieved with all-flash storage, Forrester Research recently conducted a Total Economic Impact survey evaluating results from five healthcare customers using Pure Storage FlashArrays. The researchers interviewed five existing all-flash customers and from those interviews developed a composite midmarket regional healthcare provider. They then showed how such an organization would experience an average increase in profitability (above the cost of acquiring the storage itself) of more than $1 million over a three-year period. These savings would come about as a result of improved clinician productivity and cost savings in the management and deployment of storage. 1 With these kinds of results, it is clear that flash storage is not just the future of storage for healthcare it is the present. Organizations adopting the right flash storage 1 The Total Impact of Pure Storage FlashArray FA-400 Series Storage Solutions, Forrester Research, August 2014 solutions are gaining competitive advantage by improving patient care, addressing meaningful use challenges and strengthening security, all while reducing costs and complexity. In this white paper we examine the advantages of using all-flash storage in the healthcare industry, focusing on the mission-critical applications of EHR and VDI. We also offer guidance in what to look for in an all-flash solution. The Benefits of Flash for EHR The increased usage of EHR applications is having a profound impact on healthcare. EHR systems are no longer just about record keeping; they are now a critical factor in improving patient care, satisfying meaningful use compliance requirements, enabling evidence-based care initiatives, and supporting advanced disease management processes. In addition, many healthcare providers are gaining tremendous value and synergy by integrating their PG. 2

3 WHITE PAPER EHR systems with back-office functions such as billing and scheduling, as well as areas such as population health management. improved productivity and EHR performance that contributed an incremental $1.029M to the bottom line over a three-year period. 3 As EHR systems continue to be more integrated and integral to every aspect of healthcare, they are placing tremendous demands on IT. According to one survey, approximately 40% of providers were looking to replace their EHR systems in 2014, and nearly 90% said they were seeking an integrated EHR solution. 2 The storage infrastructure is particularly affected by the changing requirements of EHR systems. These systems are collecting more data than ever before, with no signs of a letdown. In fact, data growth will accelerate as clinicians continue to utilize data-intensive procedures and healthcare facilities leverage the value of their EHR systems. It s not just about capacity, of course. The changes taking place in EHR-related services demand levels of performance, scalability, simplicity and resiliency that are beyond the capabilities of legacy hard disk drive (HDD) systems. Procedures such as heart scans or MRIs require massive amounts of data along with the highest levels of storage performance. Clinicians simply cannot afford to be slowed down by storage bottlenecks, which impact the quality of care, patient satisfaction and the ability to satisfy meaningful use requirements. The availability of cost-effective enterprise-class flash storage is a game-changer for EHR systems. Flash delivers IOPS performance that is orders of magnitude greater than HDD. Physicians not only get results of procedures much faster, but they can also increase productivity to the point where they see more patients. As noted by Forrester Research, the sub-millisecond latency of the all-flash solution in its composite organization resulted in In addition to the better performance and productivity enabled by all-flash solutions, Pure Storage FlashArrays deliver important improvements in resiliency, management simplicity, deduplication and scalability that make them particularly valuable for EHR systems. For example, Pure Storage offers a unique Evergreen Storage model that eliminates the need for expensive and risky forklift upgrades every few years, so there is no planned downtime and no need for difficult data migrations. Forrester estimated the benefits of this model to be more than $234,000 over a three-year period. In addition, Pure Storage FlashArrays were much simpler to manage, deploy and scale for the healthcare organizations that participated in the Forrester study. Compared with HDDs, the Pure Storage FlashArrays were easier to maintain and had less RAID rebuild operations. Overall savings through simplified deployment and management totaled nearly $320, The Benefits of Flash for VDI Virtual desktop infrastructure is emerging as another mission-critical application for healthcare organizations. With VDI, healthcare providers can enable mobility in a secure environment because data and applications are centrally located in the data center. This is important in today s environment as clinicians strive to improve productivity through mobile solutions such as tablets and bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives. For administrators, VDI can be a cost-effective alternative to traditional modes of equipping end users, particularly 3 Ibid, footnote #1 2 EHR Software BuyerView, 2014, Software Advice, April 21, Ibid, footnote #1 PG. 3

4 How All-Flash Storage in EHR and VDI Can Lower Costs and Improve Quality of Care with the use of thin and zero clients. VDI can also deliver better data protection than traditional laptop and desktop environments. In the EHR survey cited earlier, mobile support was the most prominent feature requested by buyers. 5 Just as flash storage has become integral to the successful deployment of EHR systems, it is equally important to the successful deployment of VDI. Legacy HDD systems struggle to deliver the performance required by VDI: They often crumble under the weight of login storms, and they cause latency when delivering important applications or the results of data-intensive procedures. In supporting VDI in healthcare environments, most allflash solutions will deliver the performance you require, but there are additional features and functions to look for that will extend the value of the solution beyond performance. For example, in healthcare data files (unlike images), much of the data can be duplicated and compressed, so you should choose a solution that has integrated deduplication and compression features. Healthcare customers of Pure Storage reported to Forrester that they were getting data reduction results of 10:1 to 13:1 for VDI, both persistent and non-persistent. 6 These high levels of data reduction lead to lower costs, reduced energy consumption and more efficient use of storage. In addition to efficiency, security is another important concern for VDI environments. This is another area where the Pure Storage model for all-flash solutions offers advantages versus competitive systems. In Pure Storage FlashArrays, every piece of data is encrypted with no impact on performance, so when you are measuring IOPs performance, you are doing so with critical security features already built-in. With Pure Storage FlashArrays, VDI can reduce the risk of electronic Protected Health Information (ephi) breaches without impacting overall storage 5 Ibid, footnote #2 6 Ibid, footnote #1 performance. Also, the Evergreen Storage model helps to bolster security in VDI environments because you don t have to take the system down or perform frequent data migrations, which increase security risks. What to Look for in an All-Flash Solution for Healthcare Providers All-flash technology is not just faster storage it is a technology that provides a new paradigm for healthcare providers, enabling many new and impactful features. With all-flash technology, healthcare providers can take their EHR systems to the next level and improve patient care. They can also leverage innovations in VDI to boost productivity and enable secure mobility. In evaluating flash storage there are certain requirements you should be seeking. An all-flash solution, as opposed to a hybrid solution, will deliver the performance you require for EHR and VDI, while modernizing your storage infrastructure for the future. In addition to all-flash, it is important to consider other features and functions that will help you improve operations and reduce costs, specifically a solution that: Enables non-disruptive upgrades so you can improve productivity, reduce costs and lower risk by eliminating the need to do forklift upgrades and risky migrations every few years. Includes advanced deduplication and compression features so that you can shrink your storage footprint and thereby lower costs and reduce complexity. Incorporates embedded encryption to enhance security without sacrificing performance. Is simple to manage and scale, while allowing you to reduce TCO through improved productivity, lower overhead, simplified management and deployment, reduced energy consumption and advanced lifecycle management. PG. 4

5 WHITE PAPER Taking the Next Step All-flash storage solutions from Pure Storage deliver all of the features and benefits described throughout this article. As a result, Pure Storage customers are not only improving the quality of patient care, but they are also supporting critical initiatives around evidence-based care, advanced disease management processes, expanded mobility and security/data protection. Beyond those benefits, Pure Storage solutions allow healthcare providers to lower TCO and reduce the complexity of deploying and managing storage. To learn more about how Pure Storage all-flash solutions can help your organization, please visit us at: TEI-Report.html PG Pure Storage, Inc. All rights reserved. Pure Storage and the P Logo are trademarks of Pure Storage, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.