LucidHealth Delivers Life-Saving Images with Pure Storage

LucidHealth, one of the nation’s largest radiology providers, supports hundreds of radiologists and processes nearly five million studies annually. Years of growth had resulted in fragmented, aging storage systems and a data footprint rapidly increasing by 40% each year. Facing high stakes for patient care, the organization unified its infrastructure with Pure Storage FlashBlade® to gain high-speed, highly available access to crucial imaging studies. This transformation allows radiologists to retrieve scans in seconds instead of minutes, while also reducing the data center footprint and consolidating management. LucidHealth now leverages this foundation to support advanced AI-powered diagnostics and ensure data security with SafeMode™ Snapshots and immutable backups.

In the world of emergency radiology, seconds matter. When a patient arrives at the hospital with stroke symptoms, radiologists need immediate access to brain scans to determine whether life-saving intervention is possible. Any delay in image retrieval could mean the difference between recovery and permanent disability.

Tom Hasley, CIO of LucidHealth, knows this reality intimately. Leading one of the nation's largest radiology service providers, Hasley oversees technology that supports over 300 radiologists reading close to five million studies annually across healthcare facilities in Ohio, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Iowa, Florida, and Connecticut.

"When you're looking at cases like stroke studies, having high-performance systems is critical, because there's important decisions that need to be made," says Hasley, whose 25-year career has spanned the evolution from film X-rays to AI-powered diagnostics.

By 2022, LucidHealth faced a crisis that threatened this mission-critical workflow. Years of acquisitions had created a patchwork of aging, disparate storage systems struggling under 40% annual data growth. The organization's nearly a petabyte of imaging data, some dating back decades, was becoming increasingly difficult to access quickly and reliably.

"Putting together too many disparate systems just made it harder to manage," recalls Hasley. "We needed something that was highly available and high-speed because we deal with radiology images."

The stakes were high because slow image retrieval meant delayed diagnoses, frustrated radiologists, and potentially compromised patient care.

Hasley's team selected Pure Storage FlashBlade as the foundation for their transformation, beginning deployment in summer 2022. The decision was driven by the ability to consolidate their complex storage environment while delivering the high-speed performance radiology workflows demand.

LucidHealth deployed FlashBlade in both major data centers in Columbus, Ohio, and Tampa Bay, Florida. The organization also implemented FlashArray//X™ to replace aging production infrastructure, creating a unified, high-performance foundation for their entire radiology operation.

"Bringing Pure in helped unify our storage," says Hasley. 

The transformation was immediate and dramatic. Radiologists could now access imaging studies in seconds rather than minutes, even when pulling comparison studies from years past. The single namespace capability of FlashBlade meant no more hunting across multiple systems for patient data.

One of the most significant advantages has been Pure Storage’s nondisruptive, self-serve upgrades. For a healthcare organization that operates around the clock, this capability is invaluable.

"At LucidHealth, we primarily use FlashBlade, and we use the Evergreen® technology for our upgrades," explains Hasley. "We don't see any downtime from those, which has been fantastic."

This reliability proved crucial during hurricane season when LucidHealth's imaging centers in Fort Myers, Florida, faced potential weather threats. The team was able to quickly stand up the Pure Storage enterprise data platform in the Tampa Bay data center, ensuring continuous operations without compromising patient care.

Beyond reliability, the consolidation delivered immediate efficiency gains. "We've seen a smaller footprint using Pure Storage," says Hasley. "We've been able to reduce a couple of racks in our data center. It was more of an investment into our path forward."

LucidHealth's technology investment positions them perfectly for the AI revolution sweeping through radiology. The organization already integrates AI algorithms into their picture archive and communications system (PACS) environment, supporting everything from automated anomaly detection to workflow optimization.

"AI is the buzzword in radiology these days," says Hasley. "There's everything from head CT to chest X-rays to broken bone detection. So, it's certainly an exciting time."

The massive data set LucidHealth maintains on Pure Storage serves a dual purpose in supporting current patient care while providing the historical imaging data essential for training and validating new AI models. They are also working to implement SafeMode technology, providing tamper-proof, immutable backups that protect both current patient data and the historical data sets critical for AI development.

"We're working in conjunction with Pure Storage to better safeguard our data from any corruption or outages," says Hasley. "I do see Pure Storage fitting into the future of data. Having data highly available and accessible is critical. Making it easier for people and being able to manage that data is what will really help us in the future."