Why Backup Matters in Health Care [Video]

Health care institutions have a lot of information to manage, from patient files to financial information. This includes electronic health records, imaging data, lab results, billing systems, and a wide range of other sensitive datasets that must remain accurate, confidential, and accessible around the clock. This is part of the reason that backup is so important – to ensure that these documents and systems are easily recoverable in the face of disaster, whether that’s hardware failure, ransomware, accidental deletion, or a natural catastrophe.

We’ve seen too many big-name health care providers get breached or forced offline by ransomware and other cyberattacks. A single incident can halt patient care, disrupt access to electronic health records, and lead to serious financial and regulatory consequences. If production servers were destroyed, corrupted, or if physical copies were damaged by a fire or flood, you need to be certain that you can quickly resume operations, restore affected files, and verify the integrity of those records so clinicians can continue treating patients without delay.

Under industry standards and regulations such as HIPAA, health care providers are also required to keep records for a designated retention period and to be able to produce those records on demand. Secure, verified backups give you a reliable way to store this information long term, protect it from tampering, and quickly recover and provide access to the files when required—whether that’s for ongoing patient care, audits, legal inquiries, or internal reporting.

For more on implementing successful backup solutions that meet strict security requirements in healthcare, visit our healthcare backup page.