Hi,
On Friday 29 October 2004 08:38, plasticdoc wrote:
You do it on paper, film or magnetic tape. You do not do it on a computer system. Nobody does it. You just cannot afford it. Nobody can. Even organizations with very deep pockets gave up.
Id like to show the opposite to this opinion. Our hospital has replaced its old analog/film radiology systems with full digital systems. All x-rays, ct scans, nmr scans are digital and now stored in a central storage (with backup storage).
And, for how long is the system running?
Is it running for at least 3 years?
Or is it just beginning? In small (up to 300 bed)to medium sized (300-500 bed) hospitals, digital storage problems start to surface after the third year. In big size hospitals (over 500 bed) problems start to surface after the first year.
Of course, exceptions exist, like the oncology facilities heavily based in CAT or NMR, in which those problems are almost instantaneous.
Now, one revelation for all of us techies here is the main reason why the hospital decided to switch to full digital systems (spending some million euros)
They already spent some million euros... That is good. They seem to be wealthy. Really rich people only eat the lobster tails.
I am curious. In which support is that "digital system" based?
Is it RAM based? Is it Hard Drive based?
And in which medium is the backup stored?
And what is the practical storage capability of the main and the backup systems? Is it in the terabytes, petabytes, or greater?
Will those systems survive an external medium level electromagnetic pulse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse)?
"Society has entered the information age and is more dependent on electronic systems that work with components that are very susceptible to excessive electric currents and voltages." in International Union of Radio Science, "Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse and Associated Effects," Telecommunication Journal, Vol 52, p.57.
We do not even need to think in conventional nuclear or "shoe box" size neutron bombs here. We only need to think in the consequences of a severe storm, or a non-banal malfunction in the hospital electrical central causing an electromagnetic "pulse".
I know that paper, x-ray film, plastic based films, bidimensional optical coding over paper or synthetic film will work. Holographic systems are also said to work, but will your system work?
Will you system survive that? I wonder. Or, perhaps, your hospital have been build inside a Faraday cage...
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage)
If not, what are the plans to recovery from "bare metal".
I.e., what are the plans to recover using brand new hardware that, in a hurry, is just brought in, connected, and run through a quick software restore in order to bring a fully operational system up?
I am sure that your hospital IT Dept. has evaluated that scenario and has contingency plans for that...
We certainly would like to learn from them. Please tell us how are they long time preserving the patient data in your hospital...
Don't we all just love technology?
Just give me some of those 2 centimeter cubes with tridimensional DNA based hybrid proteins and its yottabyte (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yotta) storage capability and I promise never to talk again about megabytes, terabytes... and all those "get back down to earth" little problems...
Come on Elpidio, you should know better... :-)
Best regards, J. Antas
------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Sybase ASE Linux Express Edition - download now for FREE LinuxWorld Reader's Choice Award Winner for best database on Linux. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=5588&alloc_id=12065&op=click _______________________________________________ Care2002-developers mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/care2002-developers
