LONDON, October 24 /PRNewswire/ --

Introduction

The London Oncology Clinic (LOC) offers outstanding services in the field
of cancer treatment, using the latest technology as a key tool in treating,
supporting and caring for its patients. Established in 2005 and based in
London's Harley Street, the clinic operates at the cutting-edge of medical
treatment, with internationally acclaimed doctors aiming to deliver the
highest standards of healthcare to each individual patient.

LOC's challenge: The battle against time

One of the biggest challenges for any healthcare organisations is the
retrieval and fast access of patient notes and related information in a
secure and timely fashion. Without full records and up-to-date treatment
information, a doctor is unable to make an informed decision on the best
possible treatment and care for a patient.

Keeping all patient records and information online means that secure
backup, storage, retrieval and fast access of the clinic's information is of
major importance.

The LOC's medical records are completely electronic. It stores a large
amount of structured data, as well as unstructured data in the form of JPEG
and TIFF files, such as letters and reports from other hospitals. This
central system means that data can be retrieved quickly as soon as it is
needed, making it as painless as possible for both staff and patients.

With such a high reliance on electronic data and up-to-date information,
a highly secure and reliable system was needed that enabled staff to access
backup data in case of an emergency. The Data Protection Act, first enforced
in 2000 and updated on 24th October 2007, makes it more crucial than ever for
healthcare organisations to keep patient data safe and prevent unauthorised
access or data leakages. A medical identity theft or non-compliance with the
act could cost an organisation millions, in addition to lasting damage to its
reputation.

Secure online backup for peace of mind

Having had some bad experience with tape backup from previous positions,
LOC IT Manager, Steve Rumbles, brought in Databarracks to deliver the backup
of all its data systems in January 2006.

With the advantage of a Greenfield site and no legacy systems, the LOC
was able to implement state of the art technology from scratch. Tape backup
alone was not deemed an option by Steve, as it relies too heavily on human
intervention, and inevitably makes it vulnerable to human error. The clinic
contracted Databarracks to move its backup online, and currently has 1.5
Terabytes of data stored across its 11 HP servers backed up with
Databarracks. As the data is compressed for transport, this is shrunk to 325
gigabytes stored in Databarracks' facility, introducing significant cost and
time savings..

"I believe that online backup is more secure than tape backup as
information is not being moved from one premise to another. With large
organisational growth, tape backup really becomes unmanageable," said Steve
Rumbles. "Our biggest advantage with Databarracks is the peace of mind - if
anything on the backup side goes wrong, a Databarracks representative will
call me and sort out the problem as soon as it occurs.

The system automatically backs up seven days a week between 11pm and 7am
and when complete, the IT department receives an email from every backup set.
What's great is that only the files that have been created or changed by
staff that day are backed up overnight to the Databarracks system, freeing up
system resources. The backup procedure does not require my input and does not
affect our doctors' and nurses' from working, as all applications can still
be accessed during the backup process, and no downtime occurs.

Rumbles concludes, "The Databarracks solution is easy to use and runs
very much by itself.

This means we save considerable IT staff time and therefore money and
enables our IT Department to focus our efforts on other critical processes
that need the human touch."