Distributed Storage Healthcare — The Basis of a Planet-Wide Public Health Care Network

Abstract

As health providers move towards higher levels of information technology (IT) integration, they become increasingly dependent on the availability of the electronic health record (EHR). Current solutions of individually managed storage by each healthcare provider focus on efforts to ensure data security, availability and redundancy. Such models, however, scale poorly to a future of a planet-wide public health-care network (PWPHN). Our aim was to review the research literature on distributed storage systems and propose methods that may aid the implementation of a PWPHN.