DICOM Secure Storage, Archiving and Disaster Recovery Solutions

Why InSite One? - General Information & FAQs

Q:
Who is InSite One?
A:

Headquartered in Wallingford, Connecticut and founded in 1999, InSite One, Inc. is a privately held medical data archive and disaster recovery service provider focused exclusively on the healthcare industry. InSite One offers hospitals, imaging centers and physician group practices a versatile, secure and affordable suite of patented services, called InDex®, for managed archiving, storage and access with built-in disaster recovery of digital radiology, cardiology and mammography images and related records.

Q:
What is the InDex service?
A:

InDex® is a long-term storage/archive managed patented service that reduces risk of technology management and assures long-term compatibility through adherence to IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) initiatives: DICOM, HL7, and XDS. The solutions set is designed to optimize both on-site and off-site digital image archiving, storage, and access independent of any application. With InDex’s intelligent open architecture, this enterprise archive service provides on-demand access to digital diagnostic imaging with associated report transparently as though they are stored locally even if they reside at InSite One’s storage facility (datacenter). InSite One’s InDex enterprise archive software was developed by experts in the healthcare and IT fields who continue to develop features for a foundation that clients and partners can rely upon to bring them into HIPAA compliance and integrate into future healthcare enterprise requirements.

Q:
What are InDex's principal benefits?
A:

•Onsite access from the Intelligent Management Gateway (IMG) supporting HL7, DICOM and XDS framework protocols.
- Rapid response to queries.
- Data pre-fetching based on clinical events.

• Fully scalable onsite with no architecture limitations
- High-availability configuration.
- High-speed RAID 6 onsite provides the highest diskcconfiguration available.

• Flexible design supports seamless integration with IT applications throughout the enterprise
- Single copy online in an archive offsite.
- Disaster recovery allowing for business continuance.

• Low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
- No technology investment eliminating obsolescence, replacement and migration costs.
- Significantly reduces storage-related staffing expenses.
- Reduces the footprint within the facilities datacenter (s) with unlimited storage offsite.

• A long-term storage solution that provides continuous access to data
- Quick Return-To-Operation (RTO).
- All data migrated and archived to industry standards and it is the last migration you will ever need.
- Full support for automated IHE workflow framework.
• Savings that can be applied to other mission critical needs.

Q:
How is InDex more effective for my site than my IT department could achieve on its own?
A:

InDex is a long-term managed archive solution that prepares your institution for IHE compliance. The InDex solution allows access to the data independent of any application or application specific viewing capability because of its intelligent management gateway software and redundant storage. The solution includes hardware, software and management services and therefore should not be compared to simply purchasing storage. As an enterprise archive system supporting multiple clinical applications concurrently, InDex provides a feature set not found inherent in any single PACS or in-house storage solution that may physically be co-located, but not shared data amongst applications. Beyond finite storage clients with InDex are enabled with infinite scalability without future capital investments nor future migration. A comparable solution to InDex must address hardware and software, the maintenance and upgrades of this configuration and for long-term how exams are stored for 7 or more years. In-house scenarios generally acquire hardware and software from capital budgets, are maintained with service contracts and upgraded within the life of typical diagnostic study retention. This upgrade may require data migration between devices or technology all not required with InDex services. Furthermore, to be equivalent, software must be developed to encrypt the data for security, compress it for maximum storage and repeatedly validate the integrity of the archive data as provided with InDex and yet allow for IHE. Lastly, any solution must address the inherent redundancy included with the InDex service for duplicate copies to be stored geographically separated by over 100 miles. InDex applies economies of scale, not available internally to your IT, to amortize the advanced technology and resources required for the archiving and storage components including communications bandwidth, storage media, software and hardware, human and technical resources, and system maintenance.

Q:
Does InDex work with or without a PACS system?
A:

Both. InDex is an excellent solution for facilities with one or more PACS or those considering a PACS solution. For those sites with a PACS, InDex is a complementary solution that enhances the functionality, performance and cost-effectiveness of enterprise-wide PACS implementation. For organizations without a PACS or with limited PACS functionality, InDex delivers many of the storage and archiving features of a full-blown PACS system, minus the equipment and maintenance costs, technical upgrades and IT staffing support.

Q:
What are the innovative features of InDex?
A:

InDex continues to develop a number of unique, patented features that enhance the core features of IHE standards of DICOM, HL7, XDS and data management toolsets. Key to these features is the intelligence that InDex uses to manage the DICOM objects so that wherever possible, data is retrieved from the local storage on site providing improved performance and better workflow for client enterprise applications. These rules require that the archive be data-aware versus the knowledge being with-held inside specific clinical applications, thus affording a long-term ROI avoiding future migrations. Innovations include: Exam Ready™ - the ability to bring data closest to the clinical application; Tru-Image™- the ability to assure that the data captured is not modified for the term of the storage life DICOM Asset Management – the ability provide a single point for queries to access all DICOM storage and retrieval without data migration Today, most in-hospital archiving solutions are based on generic (off-the-shelf) databases that lack the capabilities of, and are measurably less efficient than, InDex’s optimized design. Key features include:
• Application neutrality: InDex integrates with any PACS or clinical DICOM or web application.
• Both onsite and offsite storage scaled to meet workflow requirements.
• Infinite storage: unlimited capacity, scalability and flexibility as a common enterprise solution.
• Digitally signed database records.
• Encrypted data storage and data transmission.
• Highly distributed independent system of database nodes.
• Redundant architecture; both in hardware and software (transaction integrity).
• Application independent disaster recovery capability allowing for business continuity.

Q:
How does the InDex service work?
A:

Images from various DICOM and DICOM converted modalities are captured and routed through the hospital’s network to a local server or Intelligent Management Gateway (IMG) provided by InSite One. This IMG provides short-term access to images within the hospital network and performs archiving and retrieval sessions with InSite One’s offsite digital warehouse. The local server quickly and securely sends images over the Internet or VPN to InSite One’s data warehouse servers and spinning disk. The local IMG can also retrieve images from InSite One’s data warehouse on-the-fly from workstations on the hospital network.

Q:
How is the data stored in the InDex network?
A:

InDex replicates and archives the digital images as well as related reports and stores them in RAID digital mirrored geographically placed warehouses and on spinning disk. The warehouse creates extensions to the onsite storage creating infinite storage, storage redundancy and full disaster recovery.

Q:
What type of security does InDex employ?

A:
InDex employs military grade security protocols within its storage and retrieval system. These protocols meet existing laws and regulations regarding patient record confidentiality as currently being established by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and as mandated by the federal Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Security of the network, storage facility, communications, and storage access is addressed in several layers including firewalls, filtering, digital signatures, encryption, and access control technologies.

Q:
How does InDex take advantage of Internet VPNs?
A:

By leveraging advancements in high-speed Internet VPN technologies, InDex easily links multiple and remote facilities and delivers services to the medical community on a national level quickly, reliably and securely. These technologies provide a means of transcending traditional physical barriers, which enables InSite One to offer its services to a wide geographical market.

Why InSite One? - General Information & FAQs

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