Legacy System Decommission

Using OCIE to Decommission Legacy Systems

The Challenge

Implementing a new system provides organizations with the latest technology and improved functionality.  However, new technology can make it too complex or cost prohibitive to migrate all of the data from the old system into the new.  Due to internal, regulatory, audit and legal requirements, there is a need to access this data, which in turn, forces an organization to keep old systems – aka legacy systems, turned on.

Maintaining Outdated Legacy Systems

Maintaining an outdated legacy system comes with continued costs and ever increasing risks, such as:

  • Ongoing costs associated with legacy system support; which include staffing, hardware and software maintenance & support, licensing and energy consumption.
  • Risk increases when legacy system software and/or hardware is no longer supported or compatible; requiring new investment of un-budgeted dollars and resources.
  • Potential risk that legacy system is no longer compliant with HIPAA, federal or state record retention laws.
  • Risk increases when there is insufficient internal support or non-existent vendor support – who do you call for help?

Common – But Not Ideal – Approaches

Most organizations agree that access to legacy information is a requirement that cannot be compromised, but also recognize the costs and risks associated with maintaining legacy systems.  In order to meet requirements and “pull the plug” on an outdated legacy system, one of the following common approaches is selected:

  1. Migrate all of the legacy data into the new system.
  2. Migrate all or remaining legacy data into an independent database and create queries and/or reports that enable users to access legacy data.

Regardless of the approach, migrating data is complex and error-prone.  Both options require significant amounts of time and resources; along with the possibility of contracting with a third party vendor.  A thorough understanding of the old and new system database is necessary, but challenging if the legacy system staff is no longer with the organization or existing staff has limited knowledge or database experience.

In addition, it’s not enough to just transfer data, the data has to be accessible to a user in a format that they can read and understand, such as a query or report.  To obtain query results or a readable report, business logic must be applied against the data. By design, Systems apply business logic against data to create such outputs.  Unfortunately, database migrations do not include business logic.  It must be recreated, which can be complex and difficult if knowledge is lacking within the organization.

Another challenge with both approaches is related to auditing the results of data migration.  Depending on an organization’s quality control requirements, staff may be required to validate 10% to 100% of the data elements migrated; resulting in delays for the user community before data is validated, accessible and usable.

OCIE – An Alternative – More Ideal – Approach

With OCIE, we offer an alternative approach that is simpler, less risk and more cost effective.  The OCIE approach to legacy system decommission is focused on capturing system generated reports and documents directly from the legacy system.  Utilizing the business logic designed and programmed within the existing legacy system, outputs are generated by the legacy system and directed to OCIE for upload.  During the upload process, reports and documents are indexed for easy, quick retrieval and stored in a secure, read-only format for long-term archive.  With OCIE, you can eliminate issues related to legacy access, support, costs and risk.

Donnell Systems partners with our clients to identify and implement the most efficient, automated method of generating and collecting system generated reports and documents.  Upon collection, OCIE directs legacy system reports and documents to OCIE’s proprietary extraction and custom-defined recon and upload process.  During the upload process, reports and documents are assigned security and a retention period (forever if needed); ensuring that no information is ever viewed by unauthorized personnel or purged from the archive until directed.

Once uploaded, the user community can securely access, view and search the content of a report or document.  Utilizing OCIE’s data extraction tools, users also have the ability to extract data from within reports and documents to create new outputs of information, such as spreadsheets or populate databases.

OCIE’s comprehensive approach ensures the security and availability of PHI and meets HIPAA and HITECH regulations for access, audit, integrity controls, data transmission and device security.  Using OCIE to archive legacy information helps organizations maintain greater visibility and control of sensitive data.

OCIE’s alternative, better approach, has the following advantages:

  • Reduces complexity and cost associated with transferring all legacy system data to new system.
  • Eliminates costs and risks associated with maintaining and supporting outdated legacy systems.
  • Ensures that sensitive data is protected, meeting HIPAA compliance and adheres to HITECH regulations.
  • Eliminates need to understand legacy system database.
  • Eliminates need to recreate business logic for reports and queries.
  • Avoids exposing user community to an unknown database tool and/or environment.
  • Eliminates time consuming auditing of legacy data migration.