SSO and Strong Authentication: How OhioHealth Built a Paperless Hospital
In this case study presentation, Joe Greene, IT Security Director at OhioHealth, explains how he and his team approached employee access challenges when they laid the IT foundation at Dublin Methodist, a brand new paperless hospital. More than a year after the doors opened at Dublin, their project is a proven success and there are many best practices and lessons learned to be shared with viewers. Download the webinar today!
Identity 360 - An Imprivata Blog
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Thoughts from the Siemens Innovations Conference
August 12, 2009 at 10:01 AM by Chip LeBlancI just got back from the annual Siemens Innovations Conference in Philadelphia. Even though the conference took place in early August, when many people are vacationing, there were over 1000 attendees from 200 hospitals who beat the heat by attending Innovations - attendance exceeded the expectations of the conference organizers. Innovations is not a Siemens Medical Solutions hosted event, rather it is a Siemens Med customer-driven conference with various tracks offered for the conference attendees to hear real stories from their peers regarding implementing Siemens Med solutions.
Imprivata had a booth at the event. I had an opportunity to talk with existing and prospective OneSign customers. Clearly, single sign-on and authentication are top of mind for many of the Siemens customers we spoke with. One thing is clear - CMIOs and IT folks are looking for ways to make application access seamless and secure for the clinicians while NOT changing workflows. Imprivata OneSign is what Siemens Med is recommending as the solution of choice. In fact, there were two customer presentations where OneSign was discussed.
As we all know, conferences can be long and tiring but I truly enjoyed this conference and highly recommend it for the future.
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DELICIOUSReaching Stage 6 Status with Imprivata
August 4, 2009 at 9:35 AM by Bill McQuaidThanks David.
We’re very proud of our accomplishment of being only one of a handful of hospitals that have been awarded with HIMSS Analytics Stage 6 status, especially when you consider our relatively small size compared to the many other bigger hospitals with larger IT departments trying to accomplish the same thing. Moving to an EMR format and a paperless environment requires a significant commitment from the executive team and from our clinicians.
As we began our move to EMR, we had two major concerns. 1 – Can we maintain patient data security and HIPAA compliance in an electronic format? 2 – Will the clinicians buy into what we’re doing and use the technologies we provide? These are two critical components in achieving Stage 6 status.
Training for Success
To address the concerns simultaneously, we knew that we had to come up with a solution that would get immediate buy-in from our clinicians. If you don’t have people internally using the systems and championing them for you with their colleagues and peers, it makes the road to full scale EMR a very difficult one.
This has been one of the secrets to our success – we haven’t forced any of our doctors to use the systems we implement. Instead, we work with the people who want to be worked with, and then let the rest come to us once they see how easy and successful it is.
A great example of this is when we started asking doctors to do computerized physician order entry (CPOE), which requires all doctors to do their own ordering using a computer. There was some hesitancy on the part of the doctors when we asked them to do their own ordering. The chief concern was accessing the necessary systems – doctors kept telling us “there’s no way we can log in – we won’t be able to remember all the passwords.”
To address these concerns, we used Imprivata OneSign to create a zero sign-on environment through the use of biometric authentication. We went live and gave access to a few people – when other clinicians saw how well it worked, they all wanted to use it. But here’s the key – we made them sign up for training and went through the whole process with them individually. By providing a quick and easy tutorial on the technology, we were able to mitigate any concerns of using the technology. The result is that the doctors loved it, and we use this technology in all of the physician practices now.
Not only did we get a groundswell movement on the part of clinicians to use the technology, but we also solved our core data security issues. Biometric authentication considerably increases productivity, but also ensures that only the properly credentialed users are accessing sensitive information. This level of strong authentication meant that clinical staff now had the ability to walk up to any workstation and securely log into the network, providing the real-time, secure access needed to provide superior care to our patients.
In fact, it’s worked so well, we’re rolling it out to secure remote access as well. We’ve set up virtual desktops for some doctors, so when they log in remotely, they log in once and get the security of single sign-on. So now, no matter where they are, they get their own desktop – they can print orders and do what they need to do from anywhere in the country.
The road to Stage 6 status can be a tough journey. What we’ve learned along the way is that technology alone isn’t the solution – educating the staff on the value of the technology is the most powerful tool in your arsenal.
If you’re currently working on similar projects, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how the project is progressing and if you have great tips to share for others too.
Trends Heading into HIMSS - Strong Authentication and Virtualization
April 2, 2009 at 6:55 pm by David TingHIMSS is right around the corner.
It's one of our favorite conferences of the year, as we get to see many of our healthcare customers all in one place. As I mentioned in my last post, if you're attending the conference this year, please plan to stop by our booth (#7339) and say hello, or check out the presentations by Imprivata's customers. OhioHealth and Southwest Washington Medical Center will be discussing the ‘Paperless Hospital' and ‘HIPAA Audits' respectively. With all the focus on healthcare now, what trends am I going to be looking for at HIMSS this year? Here are a few topics that our customers have shared with us:
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Desktop Virtualization - The healthcare industry is at the forefront of adopting desktop virtualization. CIOs have embraced the technology as a way to reduce the IT costs associated with desktop maintenance and to improve user productivity. As virtualization continues to proliferate, it will be interesting to hear about how these healthcare organizations are applying strong authentication to manage user identities, roles and access policies in this new virtualized environment where policies can be applied to even control the type of desktops that a user can run. The coordination and enforcement of access policies across this virtualized environment is a critical next-step in the adoption of this technology.
- Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) - According to a recent survey conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine, only 9 percent of hospitals have adopted EMRs to date, with the exorbitant costs of the systems being the main barrier. As vendors try to figure out where they are in EMR development, I expect to hear how hospitals are taking an incremental approach to supporting EMR such as digitizing records on smaller scales before a major roll out. With so many things to consider, I'll l be most interested in learning how this "walk before you run" approach impacts data security and how organizations review their policies around providing stronger user authentication for to prevent data breaches.
So what topics and trends are you most excited about heading into HIMSS?
Email me and let me know, or stop by our booth at the conference tell me what's on your mind.