Improving patient care at Iowa Health System with the IBM Grid Medical Archive Solution

■ Solution The IBM Grid Medical Archive Solution (GMAS) provides an automated, highly reliable multisite storage archive ■ Key Benefits — Automated management tools enable the entire archive to be managed with less administrative time — Fast access to historical images helps contribute to improved patient care — Redundant architecture helps to ensure image accessibility even in the event of the loss of a data center Iowa Health System, the state’s largest integrated healthcare system, is a growing federation of 11 hospitals and 130 clinics. One of the benefits of membership is access to common IT systems. For example, the same GE Centricity PACS environment and Carecast hospital information system are used for all hospitals and clinics throughout Iowa Health System. As a result, member firms can harness technology that may otherwise be unaffordable, says Bob Thompson, director of governance and the “product owner” for the PACS environment.