By Carol Dawson
A vendor neutral archive (VNA) functions as a common central database for all relevant patient information, archiving data from multiple sources throughout the enterprise that relate to a patient’s health care. A VNA by definition should be vendor neutral. Simply said, there should not be proprietary elements lurking about that would prohibit or limit the mobility and accessibility of patient data. This critical point differentiates something like a PACS from a true VNA. One of the newest VNAs to recently debut is MARZ, which arises from a partnership between Novarad and Dell.
As the health care environment has evolved, we have seen smaller facilities being acquired by larger hospital groups and an increased need to share information. “The challenges faced at that point are combining information in such a meaningful way that it can be used for the larger entity and still maintain the data integrity of the smaller entity,” said Harold Welch, Director of Implementation at Novarad. “There are also trends in the industry that Novarad has identified whereby customers will change PACS vendors every 3 to 5 years, looking for additional features and functionality that are consistent with a VNA. We have seen these decisions moving away from the radiology department and [they are] now being handled by the IT department because of the additional requirements from an infrastructure and storage perspective. The IT departments understand that with continuously changing PACS vendors, they are going to have to change this data again and again and again. The VNA only requires a one-time migration from your existing PACS into a vendor neutral format from which you could feed or populate any subsequent PACS. There is no longer a migration required. There is simply an import from the VNA.”
Harold Welch, Director of Implementation, Novarad
MARZ is Novarad’s first step into the true VNA space, with the strength of Dell’s Universal Clinical Archive (UCA) behind it to make sure that data are protected and available. “We have had a longstanding partnership with Dell for decades. This is just an evolution. We are leveraging the longstanding presence of Novarad in this industry and the strength of Dell on the backside of this.”
The MARZ VNA solution is built around the four main features highlighted in its acronym. The first is migration. One of the expensive things about changing from one PACS to another is data migration and making those proprietary items fit into the schema of the database of the next vendor. “With MARZ, there is a one time per study fee. So we will bring that data into the VNA for one charge, and they can access it as many times as they like for no additional charge,” said Welch.
The second component of MARZ is archiving. MARZ incorporates Dell’s Unified Clinical Archive (UCA) for on-premise short-term or cloud-based long-term archive. “One thing that a lot of people are discovering is that although they do have an extra copy of their data somewhere, they are not thinking about their recovery objective—how long it will take them to reproduce this data in a format that they can actually use,” said Welch. “In the MARZ solution, that is done instantaneously. If you do lose your PACS, or you have a catastrophic event in your data, you may immediately point your browsers or your viewers to the archive, which will allow access to those studies immediately while they rebuild that PACS.”
The third component of MARZ is risk-free pricing as it relates to data migration and access. The one time per study fee means not having to pay again and again. You are able to retrieve it from your MARZ VNA at no cost. Facilities pay for only hardware and set-up and configuration fees.
The last component of MARZ is its zero-footprint viewer. Rather than having something installed on each one of the systems, MARZ provides a zero-footprint viewer where no installation is necessary. Data can be accessed from many devices such as an iPad or a laptop. “Part of the challenge these days is to make sure that this patient protected information does not remain on the device that you are viewing it on. With this zero-footprint viewer, it ensures that that in fact is the case. Once you are done viewing the patient data, there is no trace left on the viewer,” said Welch. “There is peace of mind, a sense of security, that those images that you just pulled up are not cached or present on that device once you complete your session.”
