We’ve all heard stories about what’s lost during natural disasters – homes, businesses; in cities waterlogged during southern hurricanes, tornados that level schools and hospitals, earthquakes in California. While major events like these, which cause millions of dollars in damage, occur on a limited basis, a different kind of disaster catches businesses by surprise every day: data loss. Seemingly mundane in comparison and you may think that the chance of this occurring may be relatively small, yet this type of disaster can have a huge impact on your health care facility, resulting in loss of time, loss of productivity, and could possibly result in a liability.

Data loss can occur in any number of ways including human error, computer virus, hardware or system failure, software corruption, data or cyber theft, as well as natural disasters. The remedy is to have a data back-up plan in place, to ensure data is adequately protected and can be recovered in a timely manner.

Nuclear medicine software holds particularly sensitive information including patient exam and treatment plans, patient prescriptions and doses, patient statistics, and important patient reports. Your software program should have a back up strategy implemented at the time of installation. It should include:

• Backing up to an alternate medium – Backing up your data to an alternate medium such as a server or hard drive is necessary. This server should be hearty enough to hold multiple back-ups.
• Store backups online or at another location – the back up server or hard drive should be contained at a remote location. In medical offices, this could be in the server room or perhaps off-site at a disaster recovery location. If there is a natural disaster, these important medical records will be available without any loss of time.
• Ongoing backup – All medical facilities operate a little differently. Talking with your software solution provider is key to knowing how often back-ups should occur. It is usually recommended that a back up be performed daily.

If your current software system is not being backed-up or you are in need of new medical software, please contact ec² Software Solutions, a leader in nuclear pharmacy software at www.ec2Software.com or at 800-851-0025 option 3.