NetApp®, the smart data infrastructure company, confirms its leadership in the technology industry with the success of its cutting-edge solutions at the European Institute of Oncology, Monzino Cardiology Center (IEO-CCM Group). The Group, committed to delivering the best quality of care to its patients through scientific and technological innovation, and Lutech, a longtime partner of the group, announce the implementation of NetApp solutions for advanced clinical and healthcare data management.

On the occasion of the necessary technological upgrade of the storage architecture delegated to backup, disaster recovery and business continuity activities, the IEO IT team together with partner Lutech decided to implement a highly innovative project for the specific management of PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications System).

"We are excited that in an industry where data security and reliability are crucial, the IEO-CCM Group has chosen NetApp as a strategic partner to ensure maximum protection and availability of critical patient care information. The IEO-CCM Group's IT infrastructure has been enhanced with the NetApp MetroCluster architecture, which ensures complete business continuity even in the event of critical events."

Davide Marini, Country Manager Italy at NetApp, said.

PACS is the integrated hardware and software system dedicated to the storage, transmission, display, and printing of digital diagnostic images. In the particular field of Oncology, PACS has the need to make available at all times and with reduced latency times an archive of X-rays, tomographies (CT, PET) and MRIs: a huge number of digital images generated daily in the typical DICOM format that requires infrastructure capable of handling storage on the order of Petabytes.

"The next tier approach of the PACS system image availability project developed by Lutech on NetApp technology for IEO and CCM is an outstanding innovative solution to a problem common to all hospitals," said Annarosa Farina, CIO European Institute of Oncology and Monzino Cardiology Center.

For an oncology facility such as IEO, the challenge is threefold: not only to manage, store, and protect large archives of digital images but also to enable the medical specialist to make the entire digital archive available in real time at a specific point in time during the assessment of a patient's health status. Further challenge concerns the infinite time limit for the availability of medical images related to a certain patient. The primary business need, in this case, is the ability on the part of the medical specialist to quickly access the entire history, without any time limitation, in order to have the most accurate and complete clinical picture possible.

Lutech has developed, on NetApp technology, a tailor-made solution for the IEO-CCM Group, based on next-generation appliances and flash technology, managed by NetApp StorageGRID, for object-oriented storage management using a software-defined approach. This innovative tier storage architecture provides complete visibility of the storage infrastructure, facilitating its scalability and reducing operational costs.

"The project carried out for the European Oncology Institute with NetApp, of which we are a long-standing partner," says Lorenzo Greco, Chief Revenue Officer of Lutech Group, "confirms Lutech Group's strong focus on building solutions ready to migrate to cloud services and certifies the quality of our commitment to implementing cutting-edge projects.

The partnership between NetApp and IEO-CCM Group has resulted in the creation of a state-of-the-art IT infrastructure, ensuring maximum protection and availability of critical patient care information. The project was also awarded Best Project for Public Administration, at the ITALIAN PROJECT AWARDS (#IPA2K23) as, through the 'implementation of NetApp and Lutech's solutions, the IEO-CCM Group was able to achieve unprecedented levels of efficiency in the healthcare sector, overcoming the challenges associated with managing and accessing large amounts of clinical data.

La partnership tra NetApp e il Gruppo IEO-CCM ha portato alla creazione di un'infrastruttura IT all'avanguardia, che garantisce la massima protezione e disponibilità delle informazioni critiche per la cura dei pazienti. Il progetto è stato anche premiato come Miglior Progetto per la Pubblica Amministrazione, agli ITALIAN PROJECT AWARDS (#IPA2K23) in quanto, attraverso l' implementazione delle soluzioni NetApp e Lutech, il Gruppo IEO-CCM è stato in grado di raggiungere livelli di efficienza senza precedenti nel settore sanitario, superando le sfide associate alla gestione e all'accesso a grandi quantità di dati clinici.