Every medical facility is concerned with meeting HIPPA regulations in place for the storage of medical records. HIPPA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a law that was passed by the United States Congress in 1996. Part of the Act puts in place national standards for electronic health care documents, which include provisions for privacy and security of health records. Many medical facilities find that switching over to digital imaging from film imaging makes the tasks of archiving and disaster recovery much easier in terms of being HIPPA compliant.

Dicom Storage

Medical offices and imaging centers that utilize Dicom or dicom converters with their analog equipment have many options available in terms of dicom image storage. Dicom storage can happen at individual workstations that are set up with PACS systems. You have the flexibility to select dicom image storage that allows you to copy digital files to a cd or dvd. This is a quick and easy way to backup digital files on individual computers.

You can also save digital images directly to a dicom archive. A dicom archive works in a similar manner to your personal computer's archival system. The central dicom storage server is home to a database that you set up for storing medical digital images. From the dicom archive, digital files can be retrieved at individual workstations in your medical facility. This type of dicom storage also makes it easy to distribute medical digital images as needed.

Disaster Recovery And Dicom Storage

Disasters of a catastrophic nature, such as can occur with floods, fires or hurricanes, mean that your medical facility will need to have a disaster recovery plan in place, as well as one that is HIPPA compliant. Your dicom image storage solution will play a big part in that plan. Your digital files can be backed up daily onto CDs and DVDs as well as your onsite server quickly and easily at your computer workstation. They can also be archived at a secure offsite location, such as your dicom storage server. In this way, the records would be immediately accessible offsite if you could not reach them onsite. Automation of the backup process is entirely possible when you are backing up to your offsite dicom storage server.



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