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.

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?

If a separate system handles data retention policies, it also requires the same type of transaction to notify one or more 'Image Managers' that a particular study should be deleted.

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.