Landeskrankenhaus Hochzirl is an Austrian state hospital specialising in neurological care. Managed by the Tyrol Kliniken GmbH, the hospital has 200 beds spread over five departments. The Post-Trauma Neurorehabilitation Department, directed by Professor Leopold Saltuari, needed a digital preservation solution for patient health care records.

CHALLENGE

Medical records and images are incredibly important and sensitive files to store.

Health data also needs to be stored for a long period of time—the life of the patient and beyond for health archival purposes. This can be well over 100 years. Keeping data accessible is also critically important, allowing for reassessment and analysis against changing data sets over time. This allows for health trend analysis and new discoveries years after the data was collected. This can be challenging as data can become corrupt or unreadable over time. Analogue (paper or physical copies) are also challenging to manage with limited searchability, vulnerability to environmental conditions and decay overtime.

The 2018 cyber-attacks that targeted hospitals around the world showed the mayhem that can occur if records are not accessible, or worse, lost. These ransomware attacks locked down systems and prevented access to crucial patient records, demanding a ransom payment (that would often not unlock the records).

This not only put lives at risk but also resulted in significant costs to the affected hospitals.

For a hospital, access and accuracy of patient records is crucial to saving lives and ensuring the correct treatment is provided. Having guaranteed access of data you can trust is of paramount importance.

The hospital wanted a way to ensure its health records would be safe from threats and accessible into the future.

SOLUTION

Landeskrankenhaus Hochzirl chose Piql to store neurological patient records safely online for instant access, while all records are replicated offline for security and longevity.

The records have been treated for digital preservation with enriched metadata extraction for greater searchability prior to ingestion into our purpose-built platform, piqlConnect. To enhance sharing and networking of data for diagnostic and analysis purposes, Piql has also developed tailored tools on the piqlConnect platform to meet our client’s need. The data is also stored offline on piqlFilm, with proven future accessibility and security.

Compliant with OAIS archival standards, our solution provides the hospital with peace of mind as the data will never be lost or manipulated and remain accessible and usable into the future.