Hospitals and healthcare organisations are being surveyed worldwide to gauge their readiness to cope with the explosive growth in electronic data they now produce.

The survey is being conducted by healthcare data management software firm BridgeHead Software, with the extensive results made public later this year.

Health initiatives like the UK government's National Programme for IT (NPfIT) and the HITECH Act in the US are seen as key drivers in the huge rise of data now being generated by health organisations. The best practices hospitals and healthcare organisations must now adopt to effectively and efficiently manage, store and archive this data are now under the spotlight.

Tony Cotterill, CEO of BridgeHead Software, said, "The healthcare data burden is understandable given that the industry is at an `in-between stage' as hospitals transition from paper to electronic systems."

BridgeHead Software has now launched its Data Management Healthcheck survey, which will focus on a range of issues pertinent to healthcare data management. These include:

• The current rate of cloud services adoption, and if the industry perceives it as a potential solution to data management challenges
• The magnitude of cost efficiencies organisations are gaining (or anticipate gaining) from virtualisation of their server and storage infrastructure
• The significance of the "Green IT Movement" in healthcare

The survey will remain open until 31 March 2010, with comprehensive results released before 1 May, said BridgeHead.