Cloud storage as the key to transformation

Local image and data archiving is expensive and laborious. As our first client, the Evidia Group is using the newly programmed interface for JiveX 5.6 and is thus setting a major milestone in its cloud strategy. 

When Andreas Weber, IT expert and Head of IT Integration at Evidia , began his job a good eight years ago, he had to support seven medical practices. Today, the Group services over close to 100 sites in Germany alone. Correspondingly diverse requirements are imposed by the radiation medicine network, which includes individual private practices, medical care centers, some of which cooperate by teleradiology, and radiology departments in hospitals. But the objective is clear: To the extent permitted by the deployment scenarios and by technical as well as regulatory framework conditions, the server architecture will be designed to be future-proof in face of the ever-increasing data volume of the Big Data Era – not the least because Evidia is continuing to rely on digitalization, as Andreas Weber explains: "The cloud strategy is one of the essential technical prerequisites for being able to plot our future growth on the basis of an infrastructure and thus to be equipped for the future." 

Milestone for pilot clients

Evidia has now reached the first milestone thanks to the cooperation with us: This happened because the Evidia Group, as a pilot client, is the first client to deploy the Application Programming Interface (API) – newly developed in JiveX 5.6  – of the "Archive Manager" module for data archiving in the cloud. Evidia's system is linked to Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, but the interface "is designed to be manufacturer-neutral and it also supports the protocols of other cloud platforms," explained Hasan Kadi, Product Manager at VISUS. He has headed the implementation project on our side and is delighted with the new product feature at the right time. "We know from many conversations that data archiving is a pain point for many of our clients."

Local storage capacities are reaching their limits

Weber can only emphasize this. In this connection, the high usage costs for locally reserved storage capacities are only one factor, because data security is likewise high on the agenda, quite aside from the physical limits that the local computing centers sometimes encounter. The new interface will be deployed in the central archives of the Evidia Group. These will be downscaled in the course of migration to the cloud – "besides the cost savings, the main benefits for us are data security and data simplicity", declared Weber emphatically. By the way: A single cloud storage facility is not the case for Evidia. To the contrary, approximately 20 storage units respectively having around 100 terabytes capacity are distributed over several central archives. Weber would always recommend such load distribution to colleagues in comparable projects. "Everything else would be too risky."

During the development process, Weber and our team have worked together to formulate plans, discuss mockups and test prototypes – from the client's perspective an exemplary form of cooperation. "The process was so fluid and intuitive that I never had to worry about it." Andreas Weber is also absolutely satisfied with the result. "The place where I would select the new storage pot is exactly where I as an IT administrator would expect it to be." 

As easily as a USB stick

It is precisely on this simple application that we have placed emphasis. An IT administrator merely has to enter a half-dozen parameters, whereupon the selection of the new storage option already functions "as easily as you would connect a USB stick to a computer," declared Hasan Kadi. 

The transition is expected to take place smoothly and be completed as early as during the coming year. Now, however, the joint plans with us are already going beyond that, because the storage architecture of Microsoft still offers some more options that we hope to use together. For example, the intention at Evidia for the medium-range future is to map the complete workflow in the cloud as much as possible. 

Evidia 

Evidia is a group specializing in radiology, nuclear medicine and radiation therapy. It was formed in 2021 from the merger of Meine Radiologie Holding, blikk Holding and Aleris Imaging. Since April 2023, 4ways Healthcare Limited, one of the leading teleradiology providers in Great Britain, has likewise belonged to the Group. Across Europe, Evidia is represented at more than 140 sites, including close to 100 sites in Germany alone. Evidia offers its patients the entire spectrum of modern radiology and performs more than 3 million scans per year.