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Optical data archiving gives admirable access but poor performance.
“Health information management directors who think “There, that’s done’ when documents are archived onto digital media should think again. Optical archives need regular tending or data can be lost.” That’s the advice contained in an article in the November 8 issue of ADVANCE for Health Information Professionals.
Author Margaret Castrey noted the documented long-term storage problems of optical digital media systems. She cited the Council on Library and Information Resource’s (CLIR) finding that digital storage, although efficient for handling large amounts of data, is among the least stable media of all time. The fragility is based on ever-changing software and hardware more than the media, themselves, although the latter also have posed problems in the short 15 years since optical digital media have become popular.
Long Term Preservation Essential for Medical Records
“If optical storage falls short of maintaining archive integrity, what other options are available?” asks Castrey. She answers with a recommendation from CLIS’s Abby Smith. “Microfilm is still what we recommend for archiving. The brilliant thing about microfilm is that just an eye and a light source can recover information.”
Because medical and health information typically is retained for the life of the patient, or the life of a facility if that’s longer, more and more health care professionals are turning back to microfilm.
ADVANCE quoted consultant Rose Dunn, a past president of the American Health Information Management Association and a former hospital administrator, who suggested non-optical alternatives in her proposals to hospital clients. In a typical recent proposal, she recommended completed records be microfilmed within days of patient discharge. Then using a film-based imaging system, the records are scanned into PC memory for manipulation and distribution.
Dunn said archival microfilm makes great sense for cost and security reasons. She noted that consultants who recommend archiving on digital media may mistakenly be focusing on minimum state retention requirements (typically less than 10 years) rather than true medical needs.
Misguided Focus
Author Castrey added a key point. She said such misguided focus by MIS-oriented consultants “may blind them to a hospital’s philosophical commitment to continuity of care. In addition to the value to an individual, what about the public health and epidemiological value of that data? If researchers want to do a longitudinal study, where will they find equipment to read digital records (at a future point in time)?
“Digital is great for “just in time’ information that’s active on your network….But, when it’s time to move that information into the archive….. maintaining the integrity of medical records is a minimum requirement for keeping the social contract between patient and hospital intact.”
Reprinted From:
MICROGRAPHICS & Hybrid Imaging Systems NEWSLETTER
