Why Backup Your Medical Records to the Cloud?
Did you know ….
- The University of North Carolina's Information Technology Service reports that "a hard drive crashes every 15 seconds." That's 354,600 data disasters a day!
- According to a survey performed by IDC analyst Cynthia Doyle, 40% of small and medium sized businesses and medical practices don’t back up their data at all! And 60% of the backup systems in place don’t even work.
- Almost 70% of small businesses that experience a major data loss go out of business within a year of the incident.
Many medical practices struggle with the best way to backup their data. With the increased level of internet threats through viruses, spyware and other malicious software, this is not a decision to be taken lightly.
Conventional backup methodologies used by most practices such as tapes, DVD/CD drives, and external hard drives are NOT good enough. Here’s why:
- Human error accounts for almost a third of all data losses! Someone has to monitor, test, update and secure the media daily
- High failure rates
- Slow read / write speed
- High costs for hardware, offsite storage of media and personel
- Reduced flexibility caused by fixed capacity of tapes, disks and drives
Beyond the reasons that conventional backup methodologies are insufficient, here are some additional reasons Medical Remote Backup Services are quickly becoming the primary method of performing backups:
“Set it and forget it” automatic backup management
Your EMR data is automatically backed up every day (or whatever frequency you request). All you need to do is leave your computer or server connected to the internet during the time you choose to do your backup. Your backups are no longer dependant on a person.
The secure offsite medical records backup media is a redundant server system in a temperature controlled, secure facility, not a simple tape or disk drive.
Access to your data wherever/whenever.
Anyone who has broadband access to the internet can backup and restore data from their desktop computers, servers and laptops over the internet.
Reduced cost
Using the internet to do online backups eliminates hardware and payroll costs. Your practice will no longer need to buy tapes, drives, extra servers, etc. and will no longer need to pay employees to manage the medical records backup process. Traditional data restoration costs can be in the thousands compared to the minimal monthly costs to backup online.
*HP&SCORE: Impact on US Small Business of Natural & Man-Made Disasters (2007)