Hitachi Data Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Tokyo-headquartered Hitachi Limited, has introduced the Hitachi Clinical Repository (HCR), a new information management solution for healthcare providers to improve clinical decision making and consequent patient care.
The HCR virtualizes image and non-image data to create a metadata repository based on any information system (independent of source applications), and gives healthcare providers a consolidated view of all relevant patient information.
This helps healthcare organizations increase interoperability, significantly reduce costs, improve access to data, and better utilize electronic health records (EHRs) to meet important government healthcare initiatives.
The HCR comprises of several Hitachi storage technologies including Hitachi Content Platform (HCP), Hitachi NAS Platform, powered by BlueArc (HNAS), and Hitachi Data Discovery Suite (HDDS).
As opposed to current Vendor Neutral Archives (VNAs) that focus only on medical images, the HCR consolidates all patient data, standardizes the formats across disparate applications and eventually provides this data to EHR and portals in a single, unified view.
This helps in intelligent mining, and secure central distribution of such data.
Hitachi Data Systems Health and Life Sciences vice president Bill Burns said Hitachi Clinical Repository takes the concept of Medical Imaging VNAs and expands it to include the entire healthcare facility.
The HCR is available for hospitals and hospital groups of all sizes, integrated delivery networks (IDN) and health information exchanges.