Data Center

Why Healthcare Organizations Should Consider Next-Generation Data Centers

As healthcare data volumes soar, next-generation storage platforms like HPE’s help hospitals keep pace with performance, security and real-time access demands.

Nathan Eddy

Nathan Eddy works as an independent filmmaker and journalist based in Berlin, specializing in architecture, business technology and healthcare IT. He is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Many hospitals and health systems are reaching a tipping point as they struggle to store, organize and leverage an exponentially increasing volume of data.

Traditional storage architectures, originally built for limited, structured data sets, are straining under the avalanche of data accumulated by electronic health records, wearable sensors, remote monitoring devices and medical imaging.

Chris Platt, chief technologist for healthcare life sciences at HPE, explains that the issue isn’t just scale, it’s what providers can do with that data.

“We’re in a data explosion right now,” he says. “Healthcare organizations are under pressure to manage, store, protect and curate all of that data in meaningful ways.”

According to Platt, a midsized hospital network may now generate upward of 55 petabytes of data per year.

While most of that data goes unused after its immediate value expires, it’s becoming increasingly relevant for long-term initiatives such as AI model training and real-time clinical decision support.

The challenge, Platt says, is making the data usable — quickly, securely and at scale.

DISCOVER: HPE helps healthcare organizations connect, protect, analyze and act on their your data.

HPE Data Storage Solutions Prepare Health System for the Future

That’s where modern storage infrastructure comes in. HPE’s data offerings for healthcare — including Alletra Storage, modular smart array storage and GreenLake, a hybrid cloud solution — are designed with a dual focus on interoperability and real-time performance.

The goal is to enable healthcare organizations to consolidate massive, disparate data sets without compromising security or incurring excessive latency.

“Copying data around isn’t going to deliver the outcomes we want,” Platt says. “We need to access it with minimal latency, wherever it is located and however it was created.”

At the center of this approach is HPE’s data fabric software, a unified architecture that creates a global “namespace” for healthcare data.

Radiology scans, electronic health records and remote telemetry can all feed into a central, active data lake, which Platt explains is critical for powering emerging AI use cases.

To ensure consistent performance at petabyte scale, HPE’s architecture combines scale-up and scale-out flexibility.

That allows IT teams to expand capacity and access data concurrently — essential for workflows that rely on fast, distributed data retrieval, such as imaging diagnostics and precision medicine pipelines.

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Meeting Privacy and Compliance Standards Without Compromise

Beyond technical performance, data privacy and regulatory compliance remain primary considerations, as HIPAA requirements and the growing threat of ransomware attacks make long-term storage planning a risk-sensitive endeavor.

“We build our platforms with HIPAA compliance top of mind,” Platt says. “Our refresh-in-place models allow customers to use the same hardware for up to nine years, upgrading controllers as needed while maintaining full compliance.”

This balance of performance, scale and security is no longer optional, particularly as healthcare organizations shift from episodic care to continuous, data-driven models of engagement.

Platt points out storage infrastructure has a direct impact on the patient experience.

“When a clinician pulls up your record, you expect it to be there, fast and accurate,” he says. “That’s all dependent on the underlying infrastructure, and we build service-level guarantees into our platform to ensure that happens every time.”

Faster access to records and images doesn’t just streamline care, it also improves the quality of interactions between clinicians and patients.

“If the applications are responsive, clinicians can spend less time typing and more time engaging with the patient,” Platt explains. “That shift in workflow is significant. And as AI gets layered into those applications, the infrastructure must support even more demanding data use.”

It’s not just about storing data. It’s about enabling better care and smarter decisions at every level of the organization.”

Chris Platt Chief Technologist for Healthcare Life Sciences, HPE

Flexible, Unified Storage That Meets Healthcare Needs

For Platt, the proliferation of data sources, especially from wearables and telehealth, makes the case even stronger for a flexible, unified storage architecture.

“Think about how much data is being generated from smart watches, remote monitoring tools and telemedicine platforms,” he says. “All of it needs to be captured, protected and available for downstream analytics.”

That’s why HPE’s platform also supports AI and high-performance computing workloads for advanced use cases such as population health modeling and medical research simulations.

The same infrastructure can ingest, serve and archive data across use cases, from frontline clinical decisions to long-horizon research initiatives.

“We can service multiple storage types — block, file, object — all from a common interface,” Platt says. “That supports general-purpose workloads and enables best-in-class analytics or AI training models from the same data layer.”

EXPLORE: Why is hybrid cloud storage more secure, accessible and economical?

Simplifying IT Operations to Improve Care

HPE’s GreenLake offering allows healthcare providers to consume storage resources as a managed service, reducing overhead and freeing up internal teams to focus on higher-value tasks.

“It simplifies operations for IT teams,” Platt says. “They can manage resources more efficiently and build a more agile infrastructure strategy across their facilities.”

Ultimately, Platt sees modern storage not as a passive data repository but as a cornerstone of future-ready healthcare delivery.

From his perspective, the systems must do more than scale; they must enable care professionals to focus on what they do best.

“It’s not just about storing data,” he says. “It’s about enabling better care and smarter decisions at every level of the organization.”

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