Netgain

The need for Healthcare IT data storage is expanding exponentially.  Netgain recognized the need for amplifying data storage requirements and has decided to utilize flash storage, as an efficient and cost-effective way of meeting this need.

As a Healthcare IT solutions provider, we have now uniquely positioned ourselves in the HIT market by utilizing flash storage to enhance our ability to meet our clients’ needs in a more efficient manner.

Specifically, we have selected Pure Storage as our vendor of choice for flash storage (sometimes referred to as SSD or solid state disk).  We will be utilizing this new technology in our St. Cloud, MN, and Chicago, IL, data centers and expect it to allow us to provide our clients with improved performance, leading to increased efficiencies within their organizations.

Flash storage fulfills the same purpose as a traditional hard-drive, but with no moving parts.

The technology offers the promise of significant performance gains over traditional, spinning hard-drives. This is a novel venture for both Netgain and Pure Storage.  It signals a movement of datacenter-grade, highly-available flash storage into large-scale, commercial use for housing mission-critical data.  Consumers are using flash everyday – the technology is common to smartphones, digital cameras, and other small digital appliances.

This takes flash storage utilization to a new sphere.

A New Dimension of Performance

Scott Baynes, Netgain’s VP of Technology, said, “We serve healthcare practices and hospitals. Minimizing latency and enabling providers to treat patients as quickly and efficiently as possible are some of our top priorities.  Flash storage allows us to improve EHR application performance and ultimately improve the patient experience at the medical facilities we serve.”

Netgain performed live-trials of partial-production load with two healthcare clients during the vetting of different vendor products.  The two clients responded favorably to the new technology, citing a significant increase in performance.  During testing, one client performed an EHR software upgrade that had historically taken approximately seven hours to complete.  On the flash platform, the upgrade took less than one hour and the performance of the application was dramatically faster.  Netgain expects to see similar results when deployed for other clients.

“We’re really the only healthcare-focused, private cloud provider that we know of offering flash storage. This is a game changer.  We believe that when EHR software vendors see the benefits of flash storage, they’ll begin requiring that their software runs on a flash platform,” Baynes said.

He also indicated that, “We’re eager to offer flash storage as an option for our entire client-base. Pure Storage will allow us to make significant improvements for our clients at a marginal cost.”

You can read more about this partnership here:  Netgain Leads Healthcare IT in Implementation of Flash Storage.