Symantec Launches Hosted Medical Image Archiving and Sharing
Symantec offers healthcare providers hosted solutions to reduce storage costs and streamline medical image sharing
Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) announced Symantec Health, a new hosted medical image archiving and sharing solution for healthcare providers, that helps lower storage costs and provides secure, Web-based image sharing for non-affiliated hospitals and physicians. The new Symantec Health Safe solution consists of two components: Symantec Health Safe and Symantec Health Image Share.
With medical images increasing in volume and density and longer retention periods occurring, storage costs are growing exponentially. Many IT organizations struggle to accurately budget and fund on-site storage. Symantec Health Safe addresses the high cost of storage by providing affordable capacity on-demand and business continuity.
“Health IT executives continually cite the soaring costs associated with medical image storage as one of the biggest challenges they face,” said Lori Wright, vice president and general manager of the Electronic Health Group at Symantec. “Symantec’s security and storage management expertise and its leading Software as a Service portfolio are key reasons why many healthcare industry leaders trust Symantec to deliver these new hosted offerings in a cost-effective and secure way.”
According to Rick Schooler, vice president and chief information officer of Orlando Health, a 1,800 bed hospital system in Orlando, FL, “Symantec has been able to create an affordable alternative to onsite storage to help reduce image archiving costs and capital expenses while enhancing business continuity. A key advantage of Symantec Health is its surprisingly quick deployment and integration with the existing Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS).”
In addition, Symantec Health Image Share enables healthcare providers to confidently share images and reports with non-affiliated hospitals and physicians over the Internet, reducing the inconvenience and costs associated with CDs and DVDs used in many organizations today.
“Symantec offers secure image sharing that is like a social network for healthcare—one clinician can invite another clinician to view images without having to implement complex interfaces,” said Dr. John Halamka, chief information officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA.
Key features and benefits of Symantec Health solutions include:
Symantec Health Safe:
- Affordable and reliable storage to accommodate the growing number and size of medical images
- Capacity on demand and business analytics to provide budget predictability and control
- Business continuity to ensure that medical images are secure and available in the event of a business disruption, a disaster or a security breach
Symantec Health Image Share:
- Ability for non-affiliated clinicians to search, view and download images with a physician-friendly Web interface
- Secure provider-to-provider image sharing to streamline clinical operations, reduce re-imaging, and enable hospital outreach for expanding the referral network
Source: Symantec.com
Symantec Launches Hosted Medical Image Archiving and Sharing
Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) announces Symantec Health, a new hosted medical image archiving and sharing solution for healthcare providers, that helps lower storage costs and provides secure, Web-based image sharing for non-affiliated hospitals and physicians. The new Symantec Health Safe solution consists of two components: Symantec Health Safe and Symantec Health Image Share.
With medical images increasing in volume and density and longer retention periods occurring, storage costs are growing exponentially. Many IT organizations struggle to accurately budget and fund on-site storage. Symantec Health Safe addresses the high cost of storage by providing affordable capacity on-demand and business continuity.
“Health IT executives continually cite the soaring costs associated with medical image storage as one of the biggest challenges they face,” said Lori Wright, vice president and general manager of the Electronic Health Group at Symantec. “Symantec’s security and storage management expertise and its leading Software as a Service portfolio are key reasons why many healthcare industry leaders trust Symantec to deliver these new hosted offerings in a cost-effective and secure way.”
According to Rick Schooler, vice president and chief information officer of Orlando Health, a 1,800 bed hospital system in Orlando, FL, “Symantec has been able to create an affordable alternative to onsite storage to help reduce image archiving costs and capital expenses while enhancing business continuity. A key advantage of Symantec Health is its surprisingly quick deployment and integration with the existing Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS).”
In addition, Symantec Health Image Share enables healthcare providers to confidently share images and reports with non-affiliated hospitals and physicians over the Internet, reducing the inconvenience and costs associated with CDs and DVDs used in many organizations today.
“Symantec offers secure image sharing that is like a social network for healthcare—one clinician can invite another clinician to view images without having to implement complex interfaces,” said Dr. John Halamka, chief information officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA.
Key features and benefits of Symantec Health solutions include:
Symantec Health Safe:
- Affordable and reliable storage to accommodate the growing number and size of medical images
- Capacity on demand and business analytics to provide budget predictability and control
- Business continuity to ensure that medical images are secure and available in the event of a business disruption, a disaster or a security breach
Symantec Health Image Share:
- Ability for non-affiliated clinicians to search, view and download images with a physician-friendly Web interface
- Secure provider-to-provider image sharing to streamline clinical operations, reduce re-imaging, and enable hospital outreach for expanding the referral network
Symantec Health Safe is currently available, and Symantec Health Image Share is expected to be available in the coming weeks.
Source: Symantec
E-Medical Records: 10 Steps To Take Now
Don’t wait for the government to finalize meaningful use requirements. Here’s how to jump-start your health IT efforts.
The federal government’s $20 billion-plus healthcare IT stimulus program has more hospitals and doctors than ever planning to implement e-medical record and other health IT systems. But many healthcare providers have put plans on hold as they wait for the government’s final “meaningful use” rules that will determine which types of systems are eligible for reimbursements.
“I’ve been in this industry for 25 years, and I’ve never seen as much anxiety and confusion,” said Dr. Mark Leavitt, chairman of the Certification Commission for Health IT. Leavitt spoke with Informationweek at the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS ) conference in Atlanta Tuesday.
Despite all the uncertainty, there are steps providers can take now that will help them jump-start system deployments once the final rules are issued later this spring. Here are 10 top ones:
1) Get buy-in and sponsorship from your organization’s top leadership, including influential clinicians and the CEO. “Solicit your leadership team and actively communicate with upper management,” said Curt Kwak, CIO of the western region of Providence Health & Services, a provider that serves Washington, Oregon, Montana, California, and Alaska.
Support from the top is critical, especially when convincing users to give up old work habit and processes. Make sure everyone understands your goals, such as how the new systems will improve quality of care.
2) Decide how you’ll fund the project–remember stimulus dollars don’t start flowing until 2011. Some EMR vendors are offering interest-free loans for the upfront costs related to the purchase of these systems. Also consider applying for federal, state, and private grants. And some hospitals are offering free EMR software to doctors under the relaxed federal Stark rules.
3) Start evaluating your workflow and processes. Figure out what steps you’re doing now waste time and money, and can be eliminated with the new system. “Health IT is truly a magnifying glass, you’ll see all your flaws,” said Florence Chang, senior VP and CIO at MultiCare, a Tacoma, Wash., hospital network. “Decide what steps don’t add value.”
4) Find out where key information resides in your organization. For instance, is information on patients’ allergies in paper charts or computerized files? Start collecting information on how many prescription drug orders your doctors put through, and how they do those orders–paper, fax, or phone-in. You’ll need this data later to measure your organization’s meaningful use of electronic ordering, said Mike Wilson, senior IT director of clinical systems at Compuware.
5) Look at EMR and other health IT products for the ones that fit your organization’s needs. Consider products that have a good shot at attaining meaningful use certification, like those already approved by the Certification Commission for Health IT, or software from vendors that are offering meaningful use compliance guarantees.
6) If you’re not ready for a big bang approach to EMRs, consider modular software and components that let you add functionality in increments. “Look at the entire puzzle for what pieces fit now, and what can fit later,” Providence Health & Services’ CIO Kwak said.
7) Determine whether you have the resources and staff to handle an on-site system–both to implement it and keep it running. If not, then maybe a hosted model makes more sense. If you need to recruit talent, figure out the skills you’ll need and get going.
8. Get your infrastructure ready to deal with new systems. For instance, can it handle computerized physician order entry? If not, what foundation can you start laying, said Avery Cloud, VP and CIO of New Hanover Health Network, a health care organization in Wilmington, N.C.
9) If you were already planning or implementing health IT systems prior to the HITECH legislation passing in February 2009, don’t change things now. Don’t divert your original plans because meaningful use deadlines are compressing the timeframe, said Kwak.
10) Finally, don’t jump into poorly thought out health IT plans just to try getting the stimulus rewards. “Don’t do it just for the money,” said Wilson. “It’s like having a baby just for the tax break.”
Source: By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee, InformationWeek
InformationWeek
Key Considerations for Hospitals Making the Move to EHRs
- Notify all affected patients within 60 days of a security breach
- Report security breaches to the HHS secretary and prominent local media outlets if the incident affects more than 500 individuals
- Track all personal health information disclosures
- Upon patient request, provide an account of every disclosure for the previous three years
Today’s distributed business environment
The push for more widespread adoption of EHRs comes at a time when the requirements for a secure infrastructure are more challenging then ever, especially given today’s distributed business environment. Increasingly, hospitals’ IT networks are connected to clinics, physician remote offices, remote contractors, suppliers, university networks, and other external parties. At the same time, managed and unmanaged endpoints, including laptops and other mobile devices inside and outside the hospital, are proliferating. As a result, security perimeters must expand beyond the internal network to numerous critical endpoints.
- Performing comprehensive risk assessments
- Identifying critical endpoints based on criticality of uptime, importance to business processes, and susceptibility to a security or privacy incident
- Defining cost-effective measures to secure critical endpoints, including mobile devices and databases, and minimize data leakage
- Implementing automation for ongoing measurement of existing security effectiveness, adherence to security policies, and regulatory compliance
- Implementing automation for monitoring, quickly identifying and responding to policy violations, and reporting on security and privacy on multiple levels—from executive dashboards to detailed reports for IT staff
- Protecting sensitive patient information from breaches by implementing data loss prevention
Managing storage complexity
As can be imagined, the adoption of EHRs also has profound implications for hospitals’ storage systems. EHRs summarize and organize patient information, including digitized images of scanned paper documents and electronic data from patients, payers, and pharmacies. They can contain vast amounts of form-based information that must be copied into backup and disaster recovery versions.
Managing storage complexity
As can be imagined, the adoption of EHRs also has profound implications for hospitals’ storage systems. EHRs summarize and organize patient information, including digitized images of scanned paper documents and electronic data from patients, payers, and pharmacies. They can contain vast amounts of form-based information that must be copied into backup and disaster recovery versions.
Customer Success Story: Genesys Health
Source: Symantec.com
St. John Health – Virtual Clinical Workstation
Unlike traditional paper records, an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system is a fast, secure and efficient way to manage critical information. Paper records are costly to maintain, difficult to control and lack the flexibility needed to collaborate between departments and organizations. Electronic records give physicians the ability to quickly and easily access patient information, thus greatly improving the timeliness of qualitative care decisions. In spite of the numerous benefits, hospitals are often challenged with implementing EMR systems because existing network and computing environments are not equipped to handle repetitive “in and out” access.
Customer: St. John Health
Industry: Healthcare Provider
Customer Size: 25,000 employees
Website: http://www.stjohn.org
Customer Profile
St. John Health is comprised of seven hospitals plus more than 125 medical facilities in southeast Michigan. St. John Health provides services such as heart, cancer, obstetrics, neurosciences, orthopedics, physical rehabilitation, behavioral medicine, surgery, emergency and urgent care.
Business Situation
The clinical workstation infrastructure for the 1500 workstations and 15,000 users was utilizing obsolete technology. Performance issues and outages were increasing. A new system was to be implemented, but the existing infrastructure would not support it.
Half of Hospital CIOs Say Stimulus Funding is Crucial for Adopting Electronic Health Records
PwC Analysis On the Impact of Health IT Stimulus Funding Finds Future Penalties May Be Bigger Motivator Than Short-term Incentives to Invest in Health IT
Federal stimulus incentives for doctors and hospitals to implement interoperable electronic health records (EHRs) will not nearly compensate them for the overall costs they will incur, but future penalties from reduced Medicare reimbursement could be a bigger motivator, according to an analysis published today by the PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) Health Research Institute.
In its paper entitled “Rock and a Hard Place: An Analysis of the $36 Billion Impact From Health IT Stimulus Funding,” PricewaterhouseCoopers says that capital-constrained healthcare organizations are struggling to find the necessary funding to purchase EHR systems at a time when they are being asked to cut information technology costs.
In a March 2009 survey of 100 hospital chief information officers (CIOs), PwC found: Read more
