Business issues
In the early 1990s, Medical University of South Carolina Medical Center (MUSC) deployed an Agfa Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS), an application to digitally distribute multimodality clinical images throughout its hospitals (X-rays, CAT scans, MRIs, ultrasounds and nuclear medicine surveys). MUSC radiologists rely heavily on comparing incremental changes in images to interpret their patients’ conditions. Yet, the outmoded archival system only supported 10 months of online and nearline data, with older data residing on file-room shelves. And the file-room staffs’ variable workloads were such that getting images to radiologists could take anywhere from five minutes to two hours. This adversely impacted MUSC’s 21 staff radiologists, who prefer the more efficient method of completing examinations in batches at periodic intervals.

Solutions
MUSC deployed a server running StorageTek ASM software in conjunction with a 9176 disk subsystem (predecessor of the D-Series™) with 7.2 terabyte capacity and an L700e tape library. The tape library was outfitted with four LTO tape drives using 100-gigabyte capacity cartridges. MUSC is using Application Storage Manager® (ASM) software to manage the data, including making multiple archive and backup copies simultaneously.

Financial benefits
The StorageTek solution has enabled the radiologists to complete their image analyses faster by eliminating delays in pushing examinations to their workstations. The Radiology Informatics team estimates that these delays have been reduced by an average of two minutes per examination. At 450 exams per day, this yields daily time savings of 900 minutes, or 3,600 labor-hours per year. Full-time equivalent costs have been reduced for the file-room staff as well. MUSC also is able to more cost-effectively comply with U.S. federal regulations that require examinations to be archived from seven to 25 years. StorageTek’s L700e tape library helped meet this requirement in half the footprint of competing solutions — while increasing nearline examination data availability from 10 months to 25 years.

Business benefits
Prior to the solution implementation, MUSC had two weeks of examinations available on disk media. StorageTek’s 9176 disk subsystem boosted this availability to 24 months — a time period that covers the vast majority of examination image data requests. This allows the radiology staff to realize their preferred method of work, batching all their image analyses into single sessions. StorageTek also enabled MUSC to consolidate its shelf-bound data and house it in the L700e tape library.

Technology benefits
MUSC boosted automated availability of its most-requested image data from 10 to 24 months, a 140 percent increase. Image requests now are fulfilled in three seconds versus a typical time of five minutes (for examinations more than 10 months old), a 99 percent decrease in access time. The 9176 disk subsystem delivers a 60-fold increase in capacity over the previous solution’s 120 gigabytes. ASM software defines archival rules that write examination data to two tapes concurrently — one residing in the L700e tape library and one on an LTO cartridge that is moved to a local disaster recovery vault. Combined with the copy available on the 9176 disk subsystem (up to two years), examination data now is safeguarded by three copies.