Turning Investments into Opportunity – How Data Protection Can Be the Dark Horse of Healthcare

The following is a guest article by Rob Courtney, Sr Director Healthcare / SLED, Veritas Technologies.

Over the past year, the healthcare industry has transformed tremendously from the ways care is being delivered to the technology enabling that change. When the world shut down and people were forced to quarantine, healthcare providers had to find new ways to deliver care and ensure that patients remained healthy as the pandemic set in. Since everyone was forced to interact remotely, the healthcare industry saw a larger push for telehealth solutions to facilitate communication. But even as the pandemic winds down, patients are interested in staying remote, with surveys reporting 65% of patients prefer telehealth and want to use it more often than before the pandemic. With this new dependence on technology, healthcare companies will need to ensure solutions are protected to keep patient data safe.

Bringing healthcare into the digital era

Digital transformation is not new to the healthcare industry, but digital transformation initiatives still need to make good business sense. Hospitals and health systems are dependent on profit to maintain business continuity and are also legally required to adhere to regulatory frameworks like HIPAA that protect patients and their data.

As healthcare organizations look to the other side of the pandemic, they need to think beyond staying afloat and adapting to these changing preferences for their own benefit. Relying on technology, like telehealth for example, will be a smart move in a competitive market especially when adjusting to a new landscape where geography doesn’t play as much of a factor as before.

But to truly drive that value, organizations need to strike the perfect balance between business development and minimizing everyday costs. They can use data management and protection tools to do just that.

Unveiling the opportunities

Patient records have been digitized for a long time, so healthcare providers understand the importance of a secure storage and backup system. Today, CIOs and technology business leaders are more likely to invest in hardware and electronic medical record (EMR) software that maintains business continuity for healthcare organizations. But there are more tools at a provider’s disposal that go beyond simply staying in business. They can also contribute to growth and be turned into a business opportunity.

Hospitals are in a unique situation because they are suffering from malware attacks at an exponential rate. In fact, as many as 560 healthcare provider facilities were victims of ransomware attacks in 2020, higher than many other industries. These attacks have obvious repercussions like financial and reputational risk to organizations, in addition to the threat of having sensitive individual medical data sold online. It can also disrupt operations further by grinding business to a halt for hours, days or even weeks as organizations try to resolve the problem. With a stronger dependence on technology, this is something hospitals need to pay attention to.

Backup and data protection are clear ways to prevent ransomware attacks from interrupting operations. Hackers are sophisticated and their attacks can often make data unusable. Having data protection in place that keeps data immutable can eliminate that risk by preventing data from being altered after it has been written and saved. Furthermore, since healthcare data doesn’t have to change after it is recorded, it can ensure accuracy and protection for patient records as patient data grows exponentially.

Mining through the data

Healthcare organizations use a number of different systems such as the Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) to store patient data. With PACS, images can’t be changed or altered and are often kept on file for up to 15 years. Storage solutions are necessary to help providers search through large amounts of medical data that, if not stored properly, could cost organizations millions of dollars in data management costs.

Data protection solutions deliver top notch data management and retrieval, in addition to delivering business opportunities by cutting down EMR maintenance costs. Hospitals and other providers can get additional cost-savings from these solutions by using them to uncover insight and value across on-prem and cloud environments. One such solution is a vendor neutral archive (VNA).

Providers can deploy VNAs for a number of benefits that enhance lifecycle management and provide a more holistic imaging history. By providing a singular tool that increases availability of medical data to improve accuracy and efficiency, VNAs are easier to train new users on.

In essence, providers need to remember that time is money, and finding solutions that keep patient data safe while also expediting processes and improving accuracy can reduce hospital costs. As the world settles into more remote experiences, the healthcare industry needs to keep pace with the technology that enables it. Providers need data backup and protection solutions that can accommodate new patient preferences while also continuing to grow their own businesses.  Technology will play an ever-growing role in healthcare and will create new opportunities for data management optimization and efficiency to drive success in the future.

   

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