Disaster Recovery in the Electronic Era

By Nick Chandler

A hurricane strikes and your health care facility must care for an influx of injured patients. How quickly can you access your computer systems and electronic data? 

While most health-care facilities have disaster-recovery plans in place, many are based on an outdated paradigm in which information technology was much less critical than it is today. Today, many health care providers lack adequate capabilities to restore critical information and services in an adequate amount of time in the event of a disaster.

With the rapid migration of health care systems from manual, paper-based processes to centralized computer systems, data backup and disaster recovery have become more critical than ever, but also more complex. This increasing reliance on computer systems has led to an explosive growth of data and a growing challenge when disaster strikes.

Whether a disaster results from a hurricane or a computer hacker, damage to centralized technology systems will affect multiple processes and data. And the longer it takes to reinstate systems and restore data, the more difficult it will be for the healthcare provider to continue operations.

We often work with health care systems looking to improve their disaster recovery strategies. Aligning the disaster recovery plan with the needs of the institution is a four-step process.  

Disaster-recovery planning can be a valuable education process. Most importantly, it compels the organization to anticipate the worst and to feel more confident about tackling the aftermath.

Nick Chandler is a senior consultant for data center & application delivery at Burwood Group, a consulting firm specializing in IT management and infrastructure solutions. He specializes in the design and deployment of data center infrastructure technologies, including core networking, server virtualization and unified storage.