Physical security and the healthcare sector Healthcare data is extremely valuable, so it comes as no surprise that recent security and data breaches at healthcare facilities have been making headlines. Just how valuable is it? Personal health records routinely fetch more than credit card data on the black market. This is why your physical IT […]
Tag Archives | healthcare
Making IT systems work on a community care model
The move to a community care model as a way to reduce costs and improve patient outcomes has been a broad trend in healthcare in recent years. However, this raises a question for health providers: how do you best manage operations in this newer and more decentralized environment? Careful thought about your choice of software […]
How to pick the right health software
With aging populations, advances in medical technology and the growing importance of ‘e-health’, software vendors are focusing more attention than ever on the health market. But with so many newcomers, how can you know you’re choosing the right software provider? Healthcare is a buoyant industry, with many opportunities for growth – and technology is a […]
Hybrid comes to your EHR systems
There’s nothing simple about the IT needs of a modern medical practice. In a small to mid-size practice, the application infrastructure has to support everything from office productivity applications to advanced imaging, group scheduling, integration with external systems, and collaboration thrown in for good measure. If that weren’t enough, all of it has to be […]
Personal apps: a new healthcare frontier
In the decades since hospitals and doctors’ offices became the traditional way to receive medical treatment, little has changed regarding the way personal health data is managed. Processes remain heavily paper-based, and data about a person’s health and wellbeing is often spread throughout different locations depending on where the consultation occurred. More recently, the arrival […]
Malvern PA: Stolen Laptop Leads to $2.5 Million HIPAA Breach Penalty
The theft of a laptop computer containing information of nearly 1,400 patients was among two HIPAA breaches that led a Pennsylvania provider of remote heart monitoring to pay $2.5 million, federal authorities said this week. Malvern-based CardioNet, Inc., essentially had no process at all for securely managing electronic protected health information (ePHI) of the patients […]
Obfuscation makes the cloud work for healthcare
Patient data is sacred when it comes to healthcare. HIPPA tells us so. In virtually every medical practice, cost controls are also sacred, and there are points where regulation and modern tools for reducing IT costs can come into conflict. Remote and cloud-based record processing is common in many fields, but adoption in healthcare has […]
Simplifying security with cloud-based management
Mobile devices improve patient care but broaden the target for hackers. They can also be stolen and lost. Plenty of examples of all three breach types are found on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ “Wall of Shame.” The theft of just one portable device from an Illinois business associate in 2010 compromised […]
SaaS or on-premises? The security challenge for healthcare applications
The healthcare industry faces a difficult paradox when it comes to IT services. Healthcare has some of the most tightly governed restrictions on how information is managed, but it runs the risk of not delivering services effectively enough if it can’t access modern IT service options. There are pros and cons of using cloud-based and […]
Preparing for the new analytical doctor
A new generation of doctors and medical students is changing the way data informs: The doctors’ interpretations of the information they have The treatment plans the make These changes in approach can carry significant implications for the IT systems that support all those decisions. Network implications Much of the heavy lifting for advanced healthcare analytics […]