Medical Examiners have a unique task. They are unlike other specialists that focus on a single aspect of the human body. Instead they focus on the whole. Medical Examiners view countless full body scans in their professional lives. In fact, if you thought a series of head CTs was large, this is a whole new frontier of large data sets. But be warned, if you are using anything other than the Cloud for storing these images, you’re at risk.

The Wrong Storage Can Result In Chaos

We are not here to force you to purchase our solution. Our mission is to enable you to better your architecture to treat patients efficiently and effectively. Solutions like a Cloud PACS are really just there to support you in your medical imaging needs. That being said, if you are using a physical storage device like a local onsite PACS, an image router, or (say it ain’t so) a physical hard drive or filing cabinet to store your patient’s imaging - STOP.

Storing images this large with the above methods is extremely unsafe. Maybe you don’t live on a fault, so you aren’t worried about an earthquake destroying your practice in the near future. However, there is much more to worry about aside from natural disasters. You have to seriously consider the faults in technology. We all know it is not perfect. So instead of going on and on about why you should never trust your images as a Medical Examiner (or any other kind of medical specialist), we have made the explanation quite simple.  Now, remember the days in medical school when you had to write those long tiresome papers? If you used a product like Microsoft Word^TM, you may recall that you would have to constantly click save. If you didn’t, you would lose everything. In fact, even if you clicked save, if the program unexpectedly shut down, you would still lose everything. If this sounds familiar, you probably already know that there is no way to get all of that content back. Furthermore, if you lose your computer or flash drive holding your work, you permanently lose your data. However, if you were fortunate enough to be a more recent graduate, you probably had access to Cloud applications like Google Drive^TM. As you know, your work is automatically saved, without you clicking any button. You never lose your data unless if you physically delete it, and finally; you can access your data from any location, any time, on any device that has access to the Internet.

Long and short: your existing solution is akin to Microsoft Word and the Google Drive is essentially what your solution could be: affordable, efficient, and effective. So as great as your solution might feel, just know that at any time your solution could fail you, and you could lose all of your data.

What Size PACS Do You Need?

We actually have a blog that talks about this in much more detail than we do here. So, if you’re interested in learning more, click here. Otherwise, continue reading…

On average, our Medical Examiner clients claim to use 3-4 TB of storage annually. That’s a lot of space. If you are turning to your local solution to hold this amount of data, please consider your alternatives. Unlike a local solution, a Cloud PACS has unlimited storage. It takes no space in your office or home. In fact, in the long run, it even costs less than what you are paying currently. Most vendors will price out your storage according to your needs. The thing is that most people don’t really know how much storage they require. We have come across many clients that were either paying for too much storage, or too little. So, we came up with a simple solution to ensure that you are paying for what you need, and never have to worry about breaking the bank. In fact, we will size out the size PACS or storage you need - no strings attached. 

Final Thought

If you are using multiple terabytes of data in storage and using anything other than the Cloud, think again. You are risking the permanent loss of all medical data. Instead, determine how much storage you really need. And don’t worry if you don’t know where to start, because that’s something we can help with. Once you are using the Cloud to store your data, you will find yourself much more relaxed and in line with local compliances.