COVID-19 is, simply put, a generational event. In my career, the only parallel I can draw is 9/11, when I was CTO and then CIO of the second-largest medical facility in the U.S. Air Force (USAF). COVID-19 is a worldwide event, however, one that affects every one of us in some way. 

During 9/11, the entire USAF healthcare IT team was laser-focused on supporting our pilots and protecting our citizens. We ran 24/7 incident centers and kept our headquarters apprised of our capabilities, often on an hourly basis.

Lexington, Mass. – April 21, 2020—Imprivata®, the digital identity company for healthcare, today announced new digital identity collaborations with Microsoft to support the healthcare environment and advance clinical mobility. New solutions include Imprivata Identity Governance hosted in Microsoft Azure, and Imprivata OneSign® Single Sign-on (SSO) integrated with the Microsoft identity service (Azure Active Directory) to provide seamless access to all applications including Microsoft Teams on Microsoft Surface devices.

When COVID-19 broke out in earnest, hospitals and other employers told everybody to go home and work remotely. I’m doing the WFH drill right now. We’re all scrambling to get things done in this new environment, and not everybody has a clear sense of how to proceed. But one thing I can tell you as you realign your systems for a remote workforce: don’t forget security.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare organizations were already implementing shared mobile devices in both inpatient and outpatient settings to improve care quality and the patient experience. However, the current emergency has shortened the timeline of deploying these shared devices in hospitals, presenting acquisition, security, and device management challenges.