Measles Epidemic Exposes Performance Gaps In U.S., Global Health Data Analytics

GLENDALE, Calif., June 5, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Measles continues to spread in the United States as health officials seek to stem the worst outbreak of the disease in decades. More than 700 cases have now been reported, about half if them involving children under the age of five.[1] James D'Arezzo, CEO of Condusiv Technologies, says, "It is the job of our healthcare database networks to map a situation like this in order to help caregivers control it." D'Arezzo, whose company is the world leader in I/O reduction and SQL database performance, adds, "Unfortunately, some pieces of this network are missing, and a number of others don't work very well."

Experts in the field agree. According to a recent report by team of scientists led by the National Institute of Health, while analysis of data derived from electronic health records, social media and other sources has the potential to provide more timely and detailed information on infectious disease outbreaks than traditional methods, there are significant challenges to be overcome. Big data offers a "tantalizing opportunity" to predict and track infectious outbreaks, but healthcare's ability to use it for such purposes is decades behind that of fields like climatology and marketing.[2]

Nonetheless, progress in data sharing has been made. State, local, and territorial health departments now have access to healthcare-associated infections data reported in their jurisdictions to the Center for Disease Control's National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN). Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia now use NHSN for that purpose.[3]

However, D'Arezzo notes, this data has its origins in a multiplicity of far-flung healthcare organization IT systems. To be usable, it must be pulled together through millions of individual input-output (I/O) operations. The system's analytic capability is dependent on the efficiency of those operations, which in turn is dependent on the efficiency of the computer's operating environment. The most widely used operating system, Microsoft Windows, is in many ways the least efficient; the average Windows-based system pays a 30% to 40% penalty in overall throughput capability due to I/O degradation.[4]

Fortunately, says D'Arezzo, I/O degradation is a software problem, one for which relatively inexpensive software solutions exist. Dealing with it does not require (and is not helped by) major investments in new computational and storage hardware. Condusiv Technologies, the world leader in this area, provides solutions that can, in the Windows environment, improve overall system throughput by 30% to 50%, or more.

"Given the staggering load of data handling required of IT in the healthcare sector today—and with a looming epidemic to deal with—the danger of major system slowdowns, and quite possibly system crashes, will increase dramatically. This is not what healthcare providers need or want. We need to fix this; people's lives depend on it."

About Condusiv® Technologies
Condusiv Technologies is the world leader in software-only storage performance solutions for virtual and physical server environments, enabling systems to process more data in less time for faster application performance. Condusiv guarantees to solve the toughest application performance challenges with faster-than-new performance via V-locity® for virtual servers or Diskeeper® for physical servers and PCs. With over 100 million licenses sold, Condusiv solutions are used by 90% of the Fortune 1000 and almost three-quarters of the Forbes Global 100 to increase business productivity and reduce data center costs while extending the life of existing hardware. Condusiv Chief Executive Officer Jim D'Arezzo has had a long and distinguished career in high technology.

Condusiv was founded in 1981 by Craig Jensen as Diskeeper Corporation. Jensen authored Diskeeper, which became the best-selling defragmentation software of all time. Over 33 years, he has taken the thought leadership in file system management and caching and transformed it into enterprise software. For more information, visit http://www.condusiv.com.

1. McNeil Jr., Donald, "Measles Cases Surpass 700 as Outbreak Continues Unabated," New York Times, April 29, 2019.
2. Potash, Shana, "Focus: Big data for infectious disease surveillance, modeling," NIH Fogarty International Center, January/February 2017.
3. "State-based HAI prevention," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, March 22, 2018.
4. Morin, Brian, "Windows is still Windows Whether in the Cloud, on Hyperconverged or All-flash," Condusiv blog post, June 5, 2018.
5. Landi, Heather, "Report: 15 Percent of Healthcare Organizations Running Outdated Operating Systems," Healthcare Innovation Group, June 8, 2017.

SOURCE Condusiv Technologies