Data backup and disaster recovery is a must have process in almost every industry in the world. But the one industry for which data backup is absolutely critical is probably the healthcare industry.
With mounting data of patient records, reports and diagnostic images that needs to be kept secure and confidential, data backup for the healthcare industry is possibly the second most important operation of any hospital, the first one being health care itself.
With the growing number of regulations and laws regarding this health care data, it becomes top priority for IT managers to make sure that processes are in place.
Traditionally, health care backups like most other industries rely on tape backups. But the problem with tape backups are aplenty starting with the issue of reliability. It is no big secret that tape backups are insecure. Plus the problem of physical storage is another big issue. There have been instances where IT managers discover during the point of restore, much to their despair that the tapes are beyond recovery.
HIPAA (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996):
HIPAA states that every medical practitioner and health care provider should maintain EMR (Electronic Medical Records) with proper processes in place. The act further requires such data to be properly backed up and restorable apart from the fact that the data must be handled with utmost care and confidentiality.
As an MSP with a number of small healthcare customers, you must make sure that the backup and disaster recovery service provider follows a number of regulations like HIPAA complaince and SAS 70 Type II certification. Vembu’s StoreGrid offering is compliant to both HIPAA and SAS 70 Type II audits.
Furthermore, as an MSP you must ensure that the data backup and disaster recovery provider provides the highest level of data security as there is absolutely no room for error in such a mission critical industry.
Taking into account the critical nature of healthcare data, it is always advisable to not settle for the second best. A majority of small healthcare practices (small offices) are yet to fully adopt complete data backup and disaster recovery services. StoreGrid backs up thousands of such data silently and efficiently in a number of healthcare institutions worldwide. The healthcare practices now only do what they do the best – health care.
