The London Oncology Clinic is using online backup services to meet compliance needs and ensure access to confidential patient data in the event of any systems breakdown.
The private Harley Street clinic, established in 2005, has entirely electronic-based processes and records, making the searching and retrieval of patient data easy.
But with such a high reliance on electronic data and up-to-date information, it needed a secure and reliable system that enabled staff to access backup data in case of an emergency.
Steve Rumbles, London Oncology Clinic IT manager told IT PRO how new online backup and storage services were brought in from specialist Databarracks to supplement the tape backup processes it already relied on.
The system automatically backs up seven days a week between 11pm and 7am and when complete, the IT department receives an email from every backup set.
"The service actually gives me the peace of mind backing up to tape doesn't," he said. "And I get my list of emails about what's been backed up, followed by a call from Databarracks if there are any problems, so I can log them in to fix it."
The clinic currently has 1.5 terabytes of data stored across its 11 HP servers backed up with Databarracks. The data is compressed to 325 gigabytes stored in Databarracks' facility that is encrypted in transit as well as at its final destination. And only the files that have been created or changed by staff that day are backed up overnight to the Databarracks system, freeing up system resources.
"There's quite often a few small file errors affecting the backup that prompt Databarracks to call me. It's usually affecting temporary files that have been locked by another process. But, because only I have the key to the encrypted data, they have to check with me before they can repair anything," said Rumbles.
He said other key benefits were that the backup procedure does not require his input and does not affect the productivity of doctors and nurses, as all applications can still be accessed during the backup process, with no downtime.
Furthermore, the compliance pressures of healthcare and data protection regulations are alleviated with the knowledge the clinic's records are kept securely and accountably.
Most recently Rumbles said the vendor was also able to help archive a server image before the applications it ran were migrated into a newer model.
