The recent Ponemon Institute benchmark study on patient data privacy and security practices sheds some much-needed light on the practice of data protection within our nation’s hospitals. According to the study, today’s hospitals have little confidence in their ability to secure patient records, revealing just how vulnerable they are to data breaches – a concern for all patients. Highlighted are some of the key findings...

On Wednesday, November 10th at 1:00 PM EST, I am fortunate to host Kristi Roose, IT director at Mahaska Health Partnership on a webinar where Kristi will share her insights on how to successfully deploy an EMR and help satisfy the requirements of meaningful use and the privacy and security standards embedded in the HITECH Act.

VMworld 2010 in San Francisco this week was an amazing event, with more than 17,000 attendees converging on the Moscone Center to share innovations, ideas and experiences with virtualization technologies. While the healthcare industry was well-represented at the event, we were excited by the variety of conversations with people from other industries such as credit unions, retailers and life sciences. People at the event showed both an enjoyment for sharing their use of virtual environments with their hunger for new innovations to improve the experience. Some key themes that seemed to trend across the event included...

Catching up on some reading after a few weeks on the road, most notably at VMworld 2010, I read Joseph Goedert’s Health Data Management article on the Privacy and Security Tiger Team’s recommendations for privacy issues that were sent to The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). The core recommendations focus on how to empower patient consent and how to ensure appropriate use and exchange of personal health information (PHI) by care givers and business associates – all in the name of good data stewardship – as ONC encourages adoption of healthcare IT.

We’re about to hit the virtual road out to San Francisco for VMworld 2010 next week, and are excited for the many activities and conversations that are lined up for our team at the event. If you’re going to the event, stop by booth #441 for a chat about securing user access in virtual desktop environments, or a demo of the integration of VMware View and Imprivata OneSign. We’d love to share ideas, perspectives and experiences onsite! I thought I’d call out some things you may want to check out as you navigate through the clouds of people milling around the various sessions, booths and labs within the Moscone Center...

Steve Coplan of The 451 Group recently published a terrific report on Virtual Desktops that examines the intersection of management and security. Steve hit the nail on the head in describing the importance of user authentication in securing virtual desktops. This is especially relevant in healthcare, which is rapidly adopting virtual desktop access (VDA) to improve clinician productivity and secure patient data. We were also pleased that Steve mentioned the work Imprivata is doing with VMware around fast, seamless user access for virtual desktops...

This week Imprivata announced its partnership with VMware, an exciting time for our company as more and more customers and prospects inquire about combining virtual desktops with simplified and secure user access to improve user productivity. Partnering with a market leader like VMware presents a great opportunity for both organizations to deliver a secure working environment that allows end users to access their desktops from machines in any location.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced new rules surrounding health information privacy and data security that is important for everyone involved in healthcare IT (HIT) to understand. By now, you’ve likely seen these rules, however the Healthcare IT Consultant blog has a nice synopsis of the news that drills down into the aspects most relevant for those in the Imprivata community. Pulling the key points from that blog and summarizing the primary requirements of the rules, here are some things to consider...

Catching up on some news from last week and I thought Tim Greene’s article in Network World was an interesting piece on the Russian spy ring story that is currently grabbing headlines. One of the most glaring errors made by one of the spy defendants was leaving an imposing 27-character password written on a piece of paper that law enforcement officers found while searching a suspect's home. They used the password to crack open a treasure trove of more than 100 text files containing covert messages used to further the investigation.

Last week, I attended the Privacy and Security Tiger Team Health Information Technology Policy (HIT) Committee Consumer Choice Technology Hearing in Washington, D.C. The gathering brought together an impressive group of healthcare industry leaders, patient data privacy advocates and HIT vendors to discuss technologies that enable consumers to choose whether or not to share their information in health Information Exchanges (HIEs). Here are few things worth highlighting from the conference...