Cloud Adoption in Clinical IT Propelled by Medical Imaging: Insights from NetApp Specialists
In the realm of healthcare, the volume of clinical content, particularly medical imaging, has grown exponentially. According to Kim Garriott, Chief Innovation Officer at NetApp Healthcare, imaging typically accounts for more than 80% of an organization's total clinical content [1]. This immense amount of data presents challenges in terms of storage, accessibility, and security.
Traditional medical imaging methods, such as a chest X-ray, generate single images of around 15 megabytes. However, emerging techniques like breast tomosynthesis produce files that are about 300MB, and digital pathology can generate images as large as 3 gigabytes [1]. These sizeable files, combined with the increasing use of advanced imaging techniques, make it difficult for healthcare providers to keep up with procurement and storage demands.
Addressing these challenges, NetApp offers high-performance, scalable, and secure data management solutions optimized for healthcare and cloud environments. NetApp's All Flash FAS, powered by ONTAP, efficiently handles the exponential growth in patient data, including large medical imaging files, ensuring fast access, data protection, and compliance with healthcare regulations [2].
Moreover, the NetApp Integrated Data Protection suite helps hospitals meet strict healthcare compliance requirements by safeguarding clinical data with encryption and centralized key management across physical, virtual, and cloud environments [2]. This focus on data protection and compliance is crucial, as providing a vendor with access to on-premises information is typically a nonstarter due to security and compliance considerations [1].
As healthcare providers consider the cloud for clinical applications, NetApp simplifies the transition. Through partnerships with major cloud providers like AWS and Google Cloud, NetApp enables frictionless workload migration, modern distributed cloud infrastructure, and integrated data management features that reduce complexity for healthcare providers [3][5].
NetApp's solutions also support virtualization and hybrid cloud setups, enabling healthcare organizations to optimize VMware environments, move workloads across platforms, and maintain control over sensitive patient data regardless of location [1][5]. This hybrid and multi-cloud management approach is essential for healthcare organizations, as the cost of onsite storage scaling may become difficult, especially with the emergence of digital pathology [1].
In addition to streamlining cloud adoption, NetApp's solutions are well-suited for next-generation AI workloads involved in medical imaging and analysis. NetApp provides intelligent data pipelines and scalable storage solutions that boost AI training, inferencing, and compliance with regulated healthcare data governance [4].
The cloud also offers opportunities for organizations to commercialize their deidentified imaging data to aid in the development of AI models, without giving third parties firewall access to their internal network [1]. This is particularly relevant, as analytics companies need FDA clearance for AI algorithms used in medical imaging [1].
According to industry analysts, spending on cloud architecture for enterprise medical imaging will increase at a CAGR of 19.5% from 2020 to 2024, while investment in on-premises imaging IT architecture will decrease slightly [1]. This shift towards the cloud reflects the challenges posed by the size and scale of imaging data in medical applications, making the cloud an attractive solution for healthcare organizations.
In conclusion, NetApp delivers a comprehensive solution set for healthcare customers, ensuring medical imaging data is efficiently stored, protected, and accessible while easing the transition to cloud environments and supporting advanced AI-driven analytics. The company's focus on data management, security, and compliance, combined with its partnerships with major cloud providers, positions NetApp as a leader in cloud-enabled healthcare services.
Related Topics: Cloud Storage, Hybrid Clouds, Public Clouds, Data Analytics, Data-Driven Decisions, Artificial Intelligence.
References: [1] NetApp. (2021). NetApp Simplifies Cloud Adoption and Supports Medical Imaging. Retrieved from https://www.netapp.com/us/media/press-releases/2021/netapp-simplifies-cloud-adoption-and-supports-medical-imaging
[2] NetApp. (n.d.). NetApp ONTAP. Retrieved from https://www.netapp.com/us/products/data-management-and-storage/ontap/
[3] NetApp. (n.d.). AWS and NetApp. Retrieved from https://www.netapp.com/us/partners/cloud-partners/aws/
[4] NetApp. (n.d.). NetApp and Google Cloud. Retrieved from https://www.netapp.com/us/partners/cloud-partners/google-cloud/
[5] Signify Research. (2021). Cloud Architecture for Enterprise Medical Imaging to Grow at a CAGR of 19.5% from 2020 to 2024. Retrieved from https://www.signifyresearch.com/press-releases/cloud-architecture-for-enterprise-medical-imaging-to-grow-at-a-cagr-of-19-5-from-2020-to-2024/
[6] FDA. (n.d.). Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) in Medical Devices. Retrieved from https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/digital-health/artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning-ai-ml-medical-devices
- To manage the vast volume of medical imaging data that is increasingly relied upon in healthcare, organizations can utilize NetApp's data management solutions optimized for cloud environments and medical imaging, such as All Flash FAS, powered by ONTAP, which ensures fast access, data protection, and compliance.
- NetApp's focus on data protection and compliance is crucial, especially in the context of artificial intelligence-driven medical imaging, as the company provides intelligent data pipelines and scalable storage solutions that boost AI training, inferencing, and comply with regulated healthcare data governance.
