SUNNYVALE, Calif.-November 1,
2011-The exponential growth of data provides a wealth of
information that, if managed and analyzed effectively, can result
in innovations and discoveries that affect our world. Nowhere is
this truer than in the health care field, where the right data
analysis can lead to new findings that profoundly change lives in
an instant. The key to unlocking this data is technology. Without
it, many of today's life-saving medical advances would not be
possible. In short, technology saves lives.
For Be The Match®, which operates the
world's largest listing of potential marrow donors and donated cord
blood units, data is life. Thousands of patients with
life-threatening diseases like leukemia, lymphoma, and sickle cell
disease need a marrow transplant every year but don't have a match
in their family. Operated by the nonprofit National Marrow Donor
Program®, Be The Match helps connect these patients with
donors. The organization understood that to save more lives, it
needed a technology foundation that would act as an enabler, not a
constraint. That's why Be The Match is built on NetApp (NASDAQ:
NTAP).
"The ability to make faster decisions and to
analyze information in real time has a direct impact on the lives
of our patients, making our storage platform a critical piece to
our success," said Michael Jones, chief information officer of Be
The Match. "With NetApp, we have been able to greatly accelerate
the flow of data, which has enabled us to facilitate 50% more
transplants around the world. NetApp has been instrumental in
helping us save more lives."
By giving patients access to a registry of
more than 15 million donors and 400,000 umbilical cord blood units,
Be The Match helps facilitate thousands of potentially life-saving
transplants every year. Transplant doctors search its Be The Match
Registry® using a sophisticated matching algorithm application
that is 100 million times more complex than blood typing programs.
Since 2007, the number of transplants facilitated per year has
risen steadily, from 3,700 to 5,500. Be The Match has set a goal to
facilitate 10,000 by 2015. This aggressive growth, coupled with the
sheer complexity and volume of data, triggered the organization to
transform its existing IT infrastructure with NetApp® storage
at its core. By building on NetApp, Be The Match was able to turn
its IT environment into a catalyst for life-saving speed and
flexibility.
NetApp Helps Be The Match Push the
Envelope of What Is Possible
As a result of its overall transformation program, Be The Match
realized a number of benefits that allowed it to speed the process
of discovery, extend its global reach, and create more accurate
matches, directly helping the organization save more lives.
Highlights include:
- A newly integrated application suite, which includes
consolidating Be The Match data onto a NetApp platform, has allowed
the organization to reduce the time to transplant by 15%. Because
many patients have diseases that can progress very quickly, the
window of opportunity to identify a donor and perform a transplant
can be as small as months or even weeks. Cutting the time to
transplant helps patients move more quickly through the transplant
process and improves their chance of survival.
- Be The Match has doubled its annual donor registrations by
building a new donor recruitment portal as a result of its shared
IT infrastructure on NetApp. The new portal helped increase annual
donor registrations, from an average of 360,000 per year from 2000
to 2008 to about 850,000 for the last two years. The more potential
donors Be The Match has access to, the higher the likelihood that a
patient will find a match.
- NetApp is able to deliver the performance and bandwidth that Be
The Match requires to rapidly complete complex analytics and to run
10 times more concurrent matching algorithm searches than on its
legacy storage. The result helps improve matching accuracy and
boost survival rates.
- NetApp's leading efficiency capabilities have enabled Be The
Match to reduce capacity requirements by 900TB and dramatically
simplify overall management, allowing it to scale from 65TB to
350TB without adding any new resources. The efficiency gains also
enable the organization to lower overall storage costs, which is of
paramount importance for a nonprofit organization.
- Moving to a NetApp foundation has enabled Be The Match to
improve information visibility and sharing across applications and
user groups, which is critical for its partner network of 525
affiliated organizations in 40 countries. Because nearly half of
all transplants involve an international donor or recipient, Be The
Match will make its services available to its affiliates via a
private cloud built on NetApp.
To find out how you can sign up and
experience the power of saving a life, visit www.BeTheMatch.org.
Supporting Quotes
- Jeffrey W. Chell, M.D., chief executive officer of Be
The Match
"Technology is critical to Be The Match's
success. NetApp has removed the technology barriers and enabled us
to forge ahead with our ambitious transplant goals. We are
confident that with NetApp at the core of our IT infrastructure, Be
The Match will be able to continue to push the envelope of what is
possible with cellular therapy and help save more lives around the
world."
- Rob Salmon, executive vice president of Field
Operations, NetApp
"The work that Be The Match does is incredible and has touched so
many lives around the world. For Be The Match, data is the most
precious resource, and their IT transformation has revolutionized
the way they work and the research they can conduct. To have NetApp
serve as the foundation for the new infrastructure is proof that
the right technology can truly help save lives."
Additional Resources
About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions
that accelerate business breakthroughs and deliver outstanding cost
efficiency. Discover NetApp's passion for helping companies around
the world go further, faster at www.netapp.com.
About Be The Match
Be The Match helps patients with leukemia, lymphoma and other
diseases who need a marrow or umbilical cord blood transplant.
People can join the Be The Match Registry® - the world's
largest listing of potential marrow donors and donated cord blood
units - contribute financially and volunteer. Patients and their
families can also turn to Be The Match for support and resources
before, during and after transplant. Be The Match is operated by
the National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP), a nonprofit
organization that matches patients with donors, educates health
care professionals and conducts research so more lives can be
saved. For more information, visit BeTheMatch.org or
call 1 (800) MARROW-2.
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