How East Tennessee Children’s Hospital Organizes 85 Years of History

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Rescuing Memories, One Asset at a Time

East Tennessee Children’s Hospital (ETCH), a leading pediatric healthcare provider in Knoxville, Tennessee, has been dedicated to the well-being of children for over 85 years. With 12 primary care offices, four urgent care centers, and numerous specialty clinics, ETCH supports thousands of families across East Tennessee. After years of struggling with unreliable systems, the hospital needed a robust solution to ensure its visual history was preserved and accessible.

The Challenge: Code Blue! Data in Distress

When Barry Wallace, Digital Communications Specialist, joined ETCH in 2018, he encountered a fragmented and failing system for managing their assets. Key challenges included:

• Data loss from unreliable systems. “Our homegrown system lived on an external cloud server,” Barry recalled. “Unfortunately, that dream turned into a nightmare.” Server corruption and viruses had led to the loss of thousands of photos, erasing valuable archives and disrupting workflows.
• Scattered and inaccessible assets. Files were scattered everywhere – on thumb drives, external hard drives, and across the network, with no central backup. “We found files everywhere, with no central backup,” Barry explained. Finding assets was nearly impossible during time-sensitive projects.
• Inconsistent file naming. Without standardized naming conventions, each designer used their own methods, creating chaos. As Barry put it, “It was chaos. Everyone had different conventions, and no one could find anything.”
• Difficulty staying up-to-date and on-brand. The lack of a centralized system made it tough to maintain brand consistency and produce cohesive content. “As we struggled with scattered tools and no source of truth,” Barry shared, “ensuring our content was cohesive and on-brand was a real challenge.”

“One of my jobs when I first started was to get a better system in place so that we don’t lose all of this material. When looking around, we found photos that were saved on the network. We found some on some external hard drives that people had attached to their computers. We found thumb drives that had files on them. It was just sort of all over the place, but with no backup system. So we had to recreate that.”

Barry Wallace, Digital Communications Specialist, ETCH

The Solution: Healthy Dose of Digital Asset Management

PhotoShelter provided ETCH with the tools and confidence to overhaul its digital asset management, addressing long-standing challenges and improving workflows.

• Secure, centralized storage. PhotoShelter’s cloud-based backups ensured that all assets were safe and accessible. “We never have to worry about losing data again,” Barry said with relief. “It’s given us confidence in our system.”
• Streamlined access with powerful search tools. PhotoShelter’s AI-powered search and metadata tagging transformed how ETCH retrieved assets.  “Whether it’s a Christmas tree with red ornaments or a historical image,” Barry explained, “we can find it in seconds with PhotoShelter.”
• Consistent file naming and tagging. By standardizing naming rules and tags, ETCH eliminated confusion and saved time. “Now we can visually identify files at a glance,” Barry noted, “instead of decoding random names like IMG_1234.”
• Efficient event workflows. PhotoShelter enabled ETCH to organize and reuse promotional materials for events like Fantasy of Trees. “We can access years of archives to maintain consistency while keeping things fresh,” Barry added.

“We needed three main elements when we were looking for a new DAM: We wanted backup confidence. We wanted to make sure that we never lost our data again, and that we always had backups to the assets we had stored; We wanted ease of search. We wanted our staff members to be able to find what they needed very quickly and very efficiently, and we wanted fast browsing capabilities so that our external stakeholders could find the photos they wanted to use to promote their departments and events. We got all that with PhotoShelter.”

Barry Wallace, Digital Communications Specialist, ETCH

Preserving the Past, Empowering the Future

PhotoShelter turned ETCH’s chaos into clarity, preserving its history and empowering the marketing team to craft compelling stories that connect with the community. With every asset at their fingertips, they can focus on driving engagement and supporting the hospital’s mission of exceptional pediatric care.

“Overcoming the stigma of a bad system was tough. And thankfully, PhotoShelter was a comprehensive enough system to overcome that. We’ve used it for six years – we’re very comfortable with it and very appreciative of how it makes our job that much easier.”

Barry Wallace, Digital Communications Specialist, ETCH

Go Behind the Scenes with East Tennessee Children’s Hospital