Healthcare Information Technology's Growing Role is Addressed in a New White Paper From Chicago Data Center and Managed Service Provider, CoreLink Data Centers

MT. PROSPECT, Ill., Aug. 30, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Strong healthcare information technology adoption rates are fueling the healthcare industry's growing reliance on third party data centers according to a newly released white paper by Chicago data center and managed service provider, CoreLink Data Centers, LLC (http://www.corelink.com).  To be successful, healthcare organizations must ensure proper security, infrastructure, compliance, and availability procedures are implemented to deliver the reliable access to critical electronic health information.

"5 Critical Success Factors for Selecting a Healthcare Data Center" by Nav Ranajee, CoreLink's Director of Healthcare, details the top factors Healthcare Information Technology leaders must consider in their data center selection planning. For example, security requirements under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the financial incentives provided by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) component of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), are prompting healthcare organizations to leverage data centers to cost effectively meet growing regulatory compliance, storage and network demands concerning Protected Healthcare Information (PHI).

Other items discussed in the white paper include the mammoth networking bandwidth requirements of Electronic Health Records (EHRs), imaging data, and clinical communications, including telemedicine across disparate areas and through such wireless technology as mobile telephones and remote monitoring. Ranajee details how a data center's many infrastructure systems must be redundant and capable of delivering real time, continuous access to the clinical applications physicians often need to make life-or-death medical decisions.

"A large part of EHR is the data from Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS) that include MRIs, CAT-scans and X-Rays which generate large image files requiring large amounts of data storage," Ranajee explains. "The sharing of these files among providers in disparate settings demands even greater storage and networking capacities that can strain existing IT infrastructure integrity and security."

As healthcare providers implement new applications they must consider the related resources and investment required for the proper infrastructure to store, manage and deliver medical and financial data. The right data center, Ranajee points out, economically facilitates this process while providing an unsurpassed level of network security, monitoring, and disaster recovery.

"In this developing healthcare environment, data requirements will do nothing except grow exponentially," Ranajee noted. "Serious problems can occur if [an IT infrastructure] is required to take on more load or deliver greater reliability than its design can handle."

CoreLink's Chicago data center, as well as its facilities in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Seattle, provide 100 percent uptime Service Level Agreements (SLA) and deliver flexible, secure, and scalable hosting and managed solutions that accommodate growth and evolving business requirements. Also, CoreLink offers a range of Disaster Recovery and Managed Security and Data Solutions.

"Scalability, security, bandwidth, uptime, and disaster recovery are the essential elements of a reliable data center," Ranajee said. "Nowhere are these qualities more important than when they're delivered on behalf of institutions entrusted with managing patients' health."

Contact CoreLink Data Centers for more information about healthcare information technology solutions, Chicago data center services, including managed services and enterprise hosting or call 866-435-2375.

About CoreLink

CoreLink is a leading data center hosting and managed services provider of critical infrastructure services delivered on a "state of the art," robust and environmentally friendly technology platform. By leveraging data centers in Chicago, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Seattle with access to massive and diverse network connectivity, CoreLink delivers small, medium and large enterprise customers and service providers with high quality and uniquely agile, data center services. CoreLink's focus on aligning customer needs with the proper solution, combined with a relentless focus on service, provides the flexibility and peace of mind all businesses require from a data center provider.

For more information, please call 866.435.2375 or visit our website or check out more at CoreLink Data Centers' blog, CoreLink on Facebook and @corelinkdata on Twitter.

SOURCE CoreLink Data Centers, LLC