Data Retention - Brief Proposal
1. Proposed Profile: Data Retention
- Proposal Editor: David Heaney, David.Heaney@mckesson.com
- Domain: Radiology, Cardiology
2. The Problem
To contain storage costs and support data retention policies defined by customers, there is a need to support study deletion across multiple systems.
Federated PACS, enterprise and regional long term archives can result in multiple copies of data being stored on different systems. When a study is deleted on one 'Image Manager' there is no way to notify other 'Image Managers' to perform the same action.
A separate system that handles data retention policies, also requires the same type of transaction to notify one or more 'Image Managers' that a particular study should be deleted.
3. Key Use Case
A group of hospitals each have local PACS, and possibly other dedicated Image Managers for Mammography, Cardiology, etc.
These local PACS are in turn connected to a regional central archive.
Data retention policies trigger the condition that particular types of studies older than a certain number of years should be deleted.
How can all these systems be notified that they must delete any data they may have related to these studies?
4. Standards & Systems
Web Services transactions similar to those used in IHE XDS-I.
5. Discussion
Vendors are already implementing Web Services based solutions for data retention related messaging but in a proprietary manner. There is a strong demand for this to be supported by IHE and this would likely result in quick uptake and implementation by vendors if such a Profile is developed.