July 12, 2007 - Royal Philips Electronics announced an agreement with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to provide disaster recovery services that are dedicated to VA users with Philips iSite, providing automated backup of all Philips iSite Radiology image data.
According to the 18th Annual Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS) Leadership Survey, 35 percent of IT executives from healthcare provider organizations identified business continuity/disaster recovery as one of their organization’s top five IT priorities today. As seen during the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, natural disasters can paralyze a hospital’s ability to provide quality care to patients in need. Whether it is a natural disaster or major power outage, it is important for hospitals to take precautionary measures to ensure that patient care can quickly resume following a time of crisis.
“The disaster recovery services add an advanced level of security for all VA clients and their patients, electronically protecting radiology image data in the VA’s secure environment,” said Matt Long, general manager of Healthcare Informatics, for Philips Medical Systems.
In the case of a total disaster where the iSite information at any VA site is lost, that institution’s entire radiology electronic image data set can be restored from the VA Disaster Recovery site, with an initial restoration designed to begin within 96 hours. Current VA centers that are iSite customers include Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISNs) 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 11 and 21. Moving forward, all additional VA centers that become Philips iSite customers will be using this disaster recovery option, intended to aid compliance with federal security standards.
For more information: www.philips.com