Diagnostic imaging network

Cloud egress cut 94% without changing how radiologists work.

The situation

A 12-clinic diagnostic imaging network in the Greater Toronto Area holds 900 TB of PACS retention in a Canadian cloud region and is regulated under PHIPA. Radiologists pull prior studies for comparison all day, and every pull was billed as egress.

What forced the question

Cloud egress was the fastest-growing IT line for three straight quarters
Egress ran at $148K a year, on top of $89K a year for storage
Retention was held at 7 years

What was deployed

6 of 9 fragments · any 6 rebuild the data

Toronto sovereign DC · 3Second sovereign DC · 3Existing cloud region · 3

Site you control or sovereignCloud or outside provider

Unchanged: Backup platform, schedules and clinical workflow
Timeline: 8-week cutover

“For the first time in eighteen months, cloud is not the fastest-growing line on my IT budget. The physicians did not notice anything changed.”

Composite CFO

What changed

−94%cloud egress$148K to $9K a year

−65%cloud storage$89K to $31K a year

$197Ksaved a yearegress and storage combined

7 → 10 yearsretentionextension funded by the saving

Questions a buyer asks

Why did egress fall?Six of the nine fragments sit in two sovereign data centres, which together are enough to rebuild any study. Comparison reads are served there and no longer leave the cloud.

Can the cloud provider read the data?No. It holds three fragments and six are needed.

What if a site is lost?Any one domain can be offline and six fragments remain, which is enough to rebuild. If a sovereign site is down, reads draw on the cloud fragments until it returns.

What changed for clinicians?Nothing they noticed. The backup platform and its schedules stayed as they were.