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Kuakini Medical Center has something in common with the Subaru Telescope on the Big Island: they both use the most advanced Sony PetaSite mass data storage system in Hawaii. Kuakini installs new
data storage systemStar-Bulletin staff
The hospital's new storage system was to be unveiled today by Kuakini Health System and Sony Corporation.
The equipment, costing about $300,000, is the first to be installed under a $2 million donation from Sony Corp., Sony Corporation of America and Sony Hawaii Company.
Patient information can be digitized, put on one tape and consolidated in the new system instead of stored in different areas, said Kuakini spokesman Marc Dixon. Information will be available instantly to physicians rather than setting up files ahead of an appointment with a patient, he said.
The new storage system also will greatly facilitate health research because tapes can be stored up to 30 years without being reproduced, Dixon said.
The system uses a tape format that holds 200 gigabytes (200,000 megabytes) of data per cassette. The basic PetaSite platform has a capacity of 5.4 terabytes; Kuakini's system will have a capacity of 62 terabytes. One terabyte equals one million megabytes.
Only two medical facilities in Canada and Colorado have PetaSite systems to store medical images and both are earlier versions, with the 5.4 terabyte capacity, Dixon said.
He said Kuakini is the world's first medical facility in the world to use PetaSite to store multiple diagnostic forms and types of data, including digital imaging, video and text material for patient care, telemedicine applications and research.
The Subaru Telescope at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan on the Big Island has the only other PetaSite system in Hawaii.