Royal Philips has announced plans to introduce a secure data recovery service, built in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), that rapidly captures and backs up an entire healthcare organization's data repository in the cloud.

The service will be specifically tailored to meet the needs of medical data backup, according to the company.

Since a typical hospital's data repository can easily exceed hundreds of terabytes to petabytes and is often fragmented across the facility, the transfer of data to remote back-up services, even via high-speed leased-line broadband connections, can be prohibitively time consuming and expensive. Because of these limitations, many healthcare organizations currently rely on local backup servers directly connected to their internal network that do not guarantee recoverability of the data in the event of a catastrophic failure.

Philips' new hybrid storage service leverages AWS' petabyte-scale data transport service, AWS Import/Export Snowball, to integrate, manage, encrypt and transfer a hospital's entire data repository to the cloud within days, rather than the weeks or months it would take using a wired network. Using the Philips data recovery service, a hospital organization's IT department plugs an AWS Import/Export Snowball device into its network, invokes the appropriate security features, and transfers the required data to the unit. The device is then physically shipped back and the data transferred to Philips' HealthSuite digital platform, an open cloud-based platform that allows the creation of the next generation of connected health and clinical IT innovations.

Vendor neutral in terms of the type, format and source of the data, the Philips service manages security, identity and access, auditing, logging and traceability associated with medical data backup. The goal is to deliver a service that would meet HIPAA requirements by the second half of 2016.

In addition to meeting one-time backup requirements, Philips' HealthSuite data recovery storage service is designed to assist in meeting the ongoing backup needs of healthcare IT departments. One or more of AWS' 50 terabyte data transport devices will remain on-site to provide a local backup, from which all or parts of the data can be quickly recovered. Philips HealthSuite digital platform will provide users with the option of adding powerful data analytics, such as population studies, and sophisticated reporting features. It will also offer them the ability to transfer files to or from the cloud via a secure Philips network connection.

"Due to the nature of their data, many healthcare organizations have understandably in the past adopted in-house solutions, but the explosion in the amount of data they now need to secure, together with new regulatory requirements, mean that they need to adopt a different approach," said Dale Wiggins, general manager HealthSuite digital platform, Philips. "By working together with AWS we can offer our customers a next-generation solution enabled by our HealthSuite platform that removes the time and cost barriers of cloud-based healthcare data backup and management."