The increasing need for data storage solutions within the healthcare industry today has come with extensive convenience and the oversight it has introduced in terms of data management, availability, protection, and adoption have proven vital to the industry.

The knowledge of the dynamics of modern health data is essential for Healthcare institutions in Ghana in order to make the right decisions to be up to date and for future compliance. These are the relevant dynamics:

Data Growth


Managing exponential data growth is painstaking. Hospitals in particular, struggle to keep up with the rapid growth of their electronic records.

Hospitals and other healthcare facilities are experiencing increasing demand for data storage devices and backup hard drives in order to manage rapidly expanding volumes of patient data.

The demand for electronic health records and high-quality document imaging, has necessitated the need for hospitals to protect their digital information.

Data Availability


Data loss in any health facility would be a huge tragedy. Hence, data management and storage measures to ensure this never happens must be implemented immediately.

Sensitive data such as surgical videos, X-ray images, CT-scans, sonographic results, cardiac catheterizations, patient files and databases need to be protected and secured.

The routine storage and transmission of large files such as CT scans, MRIs and other diagnostic images and the rollout of electronic patient health records, system integrators require reliable and durable data backup solutions for all users.

Data Management


Data management tasks co-exist stressful healthcare delivery in today’s hospitals. The healthcare delivery project flows through patient data administration, coordination of examination dates, filing of laboratory results.

This information must be secured against data loss which might be caused by various incidents. Consequently, X-ray pictures, cardiograms or magnetic resonance imaging data have to be archived for several years.
Additionally, patient data needs to be kept to get a long-term overview about the progression of a disease.

Data Adoption


Ghana’s Ministry of Health has mandated that public and private health care providers must transition their practices to electronic health records.

The benefits are clear: critical patient histories and records follow patients no matter where they seek treatment, and that same paperwork is less likely to go missing somewhere in a transition or due to misfiling.

This mandate is just one reason among many why the health care industry has become so data-hungry. Another is general legal preparedness since the careful handling of records is essential in such a risk-averse business.

Data Center


Thanks to modern technology, the health care industry is getting a top- to-bottom overhaul, legislation, and a changing demographic landscape. By the end of 2020, the health care industry was expected to spend close to $2.7 trillion per annum on IT infrastructure, including data centers.

This reflects a great change in the process health services are administered, making the availability, affordability, and uptime of data centers now a top priority to health system administrators.

An increasing number of patients are appreciating the importance of telemedicine. This is common to the mental health care space, where telemedicine uses technologies like VPNs and video conferencing software to remotely meet with patients.

The objective of the data storage management system is to ensure data is up to code with the world’s ever-evolving privacy and security regulations and best practices needed in order to realize the benefits of modern technology.

Franklin Asare


Source: citifmonline.com