Open-E NAS modules at the Klinikum Oldenburg (Oldenburg Hospital, Germany) provide a cost-efficient and future-proof solution to handling the problem of mass storage created by electronic patient records. The modules reliably put the hospital’s 800 gigabyte dataset and 20 gigabytes of new data created each month onlineOpen-E NAS modules at the Klinikum Oldenburg (Oldenburg Hospital, Germany) provide a cost-efficient and future-proof solution to handling the problem of mass storage created by electronic patient records. The modules reliably put the hospital’s 800 gigabyte dataset and 20 gigabytes of new data created each month online.

Until 2000, patient administration at the Klinikum Oldenburg was run the same way as anywhere else. All the patient data-be it findings (with or without images), treatment and meeting protocols or surgery reports-landed between the covers of traditional patient files. The hospital thus amassed three miles of cardboard and paper over the years, all of which had to be stored and indexed in an air-conditioned central archive-an undertaking that took up a lot of space and money.

The main problem-besides costs-lay in the inadequate availability of paper-based patient information, as a paper record can only ever be in one place at a time. As long as the attending doctor needed the record on his or her rounds, administration had no access to it. And if the record was in the gastroenterological or cardiology department, this meant the radiology department could not add any findings to the file-and consequently could not produce any.

As a consequence, the task of transporting patient files from department to department slowly grew into a logistical nightmare. And because it has its own cardiology center, the Oldenburg health center is anything but small! With 740 beds and 32,000 inpatient cases annually, its capacity rivals that of most university hospitals in Germany.