Digital Long-Term Archiving in Existing SAN Infrastructure

enaio® in the clinical field:

Interfaces are of critical importance. The Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Hospital in Frankfurt (UKF) stands for excellence in health care, research, and teaching. As part of the strategy of providing maximum care while facilitating research, 4,500 employees working in 32 subclinics treat 50,000 inpatients and 270,000 outpatients each year. Boasting an area of 460,000 square meters, the UKF is almost as large as downtown Frankfurt.

Work efficiency has been improved by providing campus-wide access to information and automating manual processes thanks to the ECM system: “It allows us to make work processes more effective and save working time and resources. The time and costs associated with transporting files and records are a thing of the past. Along with that, the departments are now able to collaborate more effectively. Documents which had been distributed as hard copies are now stored electronically, meaning that multiple authorized users at different locations can access them at once,” explains the IT Department of the UKF.

The incoming invoice solution from OPTIMAL SYSTEMS converts invoices into electronic format directly in the inbox using a batch-oriented process based on a self-learning capture and classification component. The solution handles both the capture of the invoice header data down to individual invoice items and the validity check. Thanks to integration with the ERP system (SAP), documents are now released in a convenient release workflow.

The hospital has been using enaio® since 2008 and has been continuously expanding the system since then. The long-term goal is to completely eliminate media discon­tinuities in document transmission.

It all started with the archive for patient records

Medical facilities are obliged to store documents for several decades in a tamper-proof manner. This includes patient records, administrative documents, X-ray images and much more. In the analog age, a huge archive of files grew at the UKF. Over 30 TB of data had to be managed when the digital archive was introduced. The usual archiving of images on UDO media was replaced by hard disk-based archiving (HP iCAS). The basic requirement in this case was audit compliance: the data is stored in order to maintain the legally required evidential value. They therefore have the same validity as paper documents. The advantages are obvious: the digital solution not only saves space, but also working time thanks to the faster document search. In addition, enaio® can be easily integrated into existing IT environments. It was connected to the storage area network (SAN) via a content addressed storage solution (CAS).

Seamless integration into the hospital's IT environment

The digital patient file is used at the UKF for the medical and administrative areas. enaio® bundles administrative data and medical findings in the same context - so both areas benefit from advantages such as more efficient information processes. It is therefore the hub for data exchange at the university hospital.

The ECM solution's variety of interfaces also comes into play here: enaio® is based on standardized structures such as HL7, IHE and others and can be easily integrated into existing systems. When introducing enaio®, it was important for the university hospital that all existing applications and areas could work together with this solution or access it, including the hospital information system (HIS) ORBIS from AGFA. Even then, the long-term goal was to avoid media disruptions throughout the university hospital. In addition to the data from the HIS, receipts and invoices, e-mails, office and other documents should also find their secure place in the digital archive.