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. In particular, to support delete at the study/patient level, rather than trying to hit all the individual instances.

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.