Physicians, nurses, administrators and other healthcare staff depend on rapid and efficient access to information to deliver high-quality patient care. Today, that means enabling a mobile workforce to access information wherever they are, whether in the office, at a patient’s bedside or at home in the middle of the night. Simultaneously, HIPAA and other privacy…
As part of the 21st Century Cures Act, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has proposed the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard, which aims to expand patient access to personal health data and improve interoperability. This standard could replace HL7 Version 2 for interoperability use cases going forward. However,…
From patient questionnaires to Internet of Medical Things devices, healthcare systems collect, store and rely on massive streams of data to deliver care, especially as they undergo digital transformations. In North Carolina, Chapel Hill-based UNC Health responded to the pandemic in 2020 by deploying new telemedicine capabilities, an online symptom-checker chatbot and automated models to…
Patient portals are growing in popularity and do more than simply provide patients with their health data; they enable patients to engage with their health. “A patient portal is basically a website where patients can go to get information about their health or manage the logistics around their health,” says Paul Brient, chief product officer…
The average hospital room contains 15 to 20 connected medical devices, such as patient monitors, ventilators and IV pumps. These Internet of Medical Things tools have become a much-needed part of patient care, but they also represent security challenges. In August, a team of McAfee researchers found vulnerabilities in a widely used infusion pump that…
To satisfy regulatory requirements, healthcare organizations must store patient data digitally in the form of electronic health records or electronic medical records. As noted in the journal Heredity, moving beyond simple storage to the actionable application of Big Data offers “significant potential” for healthcare, but significant challenges remain. Among the most common are data fragmentation,…
When the 13,000 employees of long-term-care provider PruittHealth meet with patients, they can’t spend time troubleshooting technology issues. They need to count on quick IT support. For years, however, they could only submit service requests and incidents via phone or email. That changed in early 2021, when the Norcross, Ga.-based organization upgraded from its aging…
Even as the healthcare industry continues to digitalize, the use of paper forms, contact sheets, medical records and a range of other document types requires the use of scanners. More robust and compact than ever before, scanners in use by healthcare organizations are also contributing to data security by reducing the volume of paper forms…
Healthcare organizations aim to operate with flexibility, scalability, affordability and security. Linux operating systems offer an affordable option for running back-end systems in a secure manner that only open-source architecture provides. At the center of the value Linux provides healthcare systems are Kernel-based Virtual Machines, which are based on open-source virtualization technology that is built…
