An oncologist parks his car in an underground lot and inadvertently
leaves his laptop in the back seat. Hours later, he returns to find the
window smashed and the laptop missing – along with private medical
files containing information on hundreds of his patients.

Across
the country, a neurologist attending a conference out of province gets a
call that his patient has been in a car accident and requires emergency
surgery. Her life is on the line and every second counts – especially
with her sensitive medical history. The doctor has no immediate access
to her medical files and can’t review the CAT scan and x-rays she now
requires.

While these two scenarios may be extreme, they are not
unheard of in today’s healthcare environment, when access to
information – and the security of that information – is more important
than ever. Despite ongoing efforts, information privacy remains a
challenge and is a major issue for healthcare organizations. The need
for practitioners to retrieve critical patient files makes restricted
access impractical, not to mention detrimental to the fast delivery of
patient care. Yet leaving networks open makes the data contained within
them vulnerable to a myriad of possible risks, both human and
technological.

As the country moves away from paper charts
towards electronic patient records, for many healthcare providers, the
question remains: How can we facilitate information access and be more
productive, while prioritizing security and patient privacy?

Finding a balance with virtualization technology
There’s
no question that electronic data will afford new levels of information
mobility, both within and outside healthcare facilities. Caring for the
sick and injured isn’t a desk job, and doctors, nurses and other staff
are better equipped to care for patients when they have mobile access to
information. Certainly our neurologist in the example above would have
benefited immensely with access to his patient’s files while out of
province. On the other hand, what about the oncologist who had such
sensitive information on his now-stolen laptop? He may have had access
to the files, but because they were saved on his laptop, they weren’t
secure. Is there a way to find a balance?

The answer is yes –
with virtualization technology. Virtualization technology addresses
both concerns and achieves the balance that healthcare professionals
need to maximize productivity and security.

Let’s first look at
productivity. Currently, many hospital environments run multiple
servers that each house different operating systems and applications.
One may run email, another is used for payroll, yet another runs the
Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) and so on. Because
each server is separate, in many cases they can’t “talk” to one another,
creating silos of information. The result? Doctors moving around a
hospital must physically print off the data they need and take it with
them. They can’t access it from other computers in the hospital, let
alone from home or on the road.

With virtualization technology,
one server can be divided up into virtual segments that house all of
the information in one place. So instead of needing one server to house
the x-rays and MRI data and another to store email archives, they’re
both on one server – no longer siloed, and now “talking” to each other.
Not only does this allow hospitals and other healthcare environments to
maximize server capacity, but it enables professionals to access all of
the information they need on-demand from any location, using any device –
from laptops to hand-held computers.

How could this have helped
our neurologist at an out of province conference? Using virtualization
technology, he could have accessed his patient’s vital data and
reviewed her x-rays within minutes from the convenience of his
BlackBerry or iPhone – an extremely valuable capability when it comes to
making quick decisions about a patient’s care.

This improved
mobility and sharing of information also improves productivity for
hospital IT staff. Virtualization technology slashes the time required
for application updates from three weeks to a few hours. It also
reduces server hardware costs since there are fewer servers in
operation, and requires fewer bodies providing desktop support. In
fact, using an end-to-end virtualization solution such as Citrix
Delivery Center, an organization has the ability to reduce their
back-end total cost of ownership by up to 40 per cent.

A
private matter


Now to the question of security. How would virtualization
technology have prevented our oncologist’s disastrous situation of
missing or stolen patient data?

The beauty of virtualization
technology is that none of the information is actually stored on any one
computer. All information is retained in the hospital system in a
centralized hub, and access is extended to secure outside sources,
ensuring the highest security for data and applications. In fact, the
data is “streamed” rather than downloaded onto individual computers and
information is always saved back into the centralized hub, preventing an
unauthorized breach of information.

Similar to watching a
video or listening to the radio on the Internet, you’re not actually
downloading the video or music – you’re streaming it. When you close
the connection, you no longer have access to it, because it’s not stored
on your computer. So if you lost your laptop, you wouldn’t lose the
video you just watched – you’d just have to log on and stream it again.
It’s stored on a server somewhere else, not on your computer. This is
the same principle for streaming private medical files – the information
is never stored on an individual computer – only in the hospital’s
centralized hub. Because risks to sensitive information are drastically
reduced, a stolen laptop becomes a minor inconvenience, rather than a
headline-grabbing nightmare.

Of course, it is important to
ensure that any new technology is implemented in accordance with
provincial and federal regulations. The information is streamed rather
than downloaded, as soon as a doctor or other authorized health
professional logs off the system from a device, any data is immediately
disconnected and remains safely stored in the hospital’s centralized
hub.

While the neurologist and oncologist in the examples above
certainly could have benefited from virtualization technology, the
reality is these are just two out of the hundreds of scenarios that
occur every day in our healthcare system that could reap the benefits of
this innovative technology. As our population ages, it’s becoming more
important than ever to ensure patient information is easily accessible
yet safe and secure. The improved mobility, productivity and security
that can be achieved through a virtual technology system not only
results in a dramatic improvement in patient care, file security and
staff efficiency, but also provides a significant cost savings to the
host institution.

The author is Area Vice President,India Subcontinent, Citrix Systems India