Defense health record database growing too big

A Defense Department database of electronic health records is growing so fast that it is showing signs of collapsing under its own weight, prompting information technology managers to consider dividing the storage load among regional data centers, Military Health System officials told Nextgov.

The mammoth database, called the Clinical Data Repository, which stores patient records for 9.2 million active and retired military personnel and their families, is growing at a rate of 1.4 terabytes a month and has become one of the largest databases in the world, said Army Col. Claude Hines, program manager for the Defense Health Information Management System.

Charles Campbell, chief information officer for the Military Health System, said at that rate of growth, the repository was in danger of becoming unmanageable. While the database, developed by Northrop Grumman Corp., had more than a 99 percent uptime, it “was beginning to have problems” because it was so large, he said.

Source: NextGov

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 and is filed under Info Management and Retrieval, Search News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.