Cardiovascular Research Foundation Replaced 4 Data Pipeline Tools for Medical Images with Files.com

Overview

CRF works with hundreds of hospitals, life-science sponsors, and imaging networks worldwide. It generates terabytes of highly regulated DICOM studies, echo reports, and supporting PDFs that move from external gateways in two U.S. data centers to CRF’s on-premises NAS, research archive, and downstream analytics platforms. The data is PHI and the transfers must be fast and secure.

Challenges

CRF hit operational limits as research volumes grew.

The toolset was fragmented. Box handled staff sharing, Cerberus FTP handled partners, and GoodSync and Allway Sync handled the rest. None of them held up at enterprise scale, and the gaps between them produced bottlenecks.

Routing was tangled. Images arrived through several vendor gateways (Medidata, Ambra, Paxera) into DMZ staging servers, then had to land in specific hot folders for CRF’s DICOM processing software. PHI anonymity and de-duplication had to hold across every step.

Leadership wanted one audit-ready platform that could grow with new studies, integrate with Okta SSO, and retire the public-facing FTP services.

Solution

CRF moved to Files.com as its managed file transfer (MFT) platform and replaced the patchwork of point products.

Agent-to-agent direct syncs move data from DMZ gateways to the internal NAS in near-real-time. Bypassing the cloud stage cut bandwidth and storage costs.

Low-code automation routes only the relevant DICOM files or specific modality folders from the NAS into hot folders. Files are time-stamped for uniqueness, and source folders are cleaned up after transfer.

Branded inbox links give hospital partners browser-based uploads with no FTP setup. Files.com share links let CRF staff deliver large echo reports without paying for Box licenses for that workflow.

Okta SCIM provisioning and SSO handle access. Activity logs export to Splunk for security audits.

Results

• DICOM studies now appear in the processing queue automatically every hour. Faster core-lab reads cut trial timelines.
• Files.com replaced four legacy systems (Box, Cerberus FTP, Allway Sync, GoodSync), which simplified vendor management and lowered licensing costs.
• End-to-end encryption, granular retention, and immutable activity logs cover HIPAA and sponsor audit requirements without separate tooling or manual exports.
• The platform scales as CRF grows. The same inbox workflow will pick up additional data centers and clinical partners with minimal configuration.
• Retiring the SFTP endpoints and ad-hoc servers cut infrastructure costs and shrank the attack surface.

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