To ensure uninterrupted patient care, medical professionals need reliable and secure access to patient data and healthcare systems. However, the geographical distribution of health centers and personnel, operational variability between locations and entities, the need to support BYOD, remote work, acquisitions and the requirement to rapidly onboard employees to a wide range of apps, poses significant challenges.
Healthcare organizations that turn to virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) will discover it is too complex and costly to meet their needs. In addition, it is not user-friendly enough for a medical team that needs to focus on saving lives and answering patients’ needs. The Secure Enclave is an innovative approach that allows medical teams to continue using their own devices, while ensuring security, compliance and ease of use, in a way that is radically simplified and with lower cost to serve. Here’s how it all works.
Network and Connectivity Challenges Across Healthcare Organizations
Healthcare organizations around the world are dealing with numerous connectivity challenges. The main ones include:
- Geographical distribution – Healthcare organizations are geographically distributed by nature. They could have clinics spread out across the country or countries, relationships with various hospitals, doctors and medical personnel working from clinics and from home and more. This requires a solution that can support easy-to-use remote connectivity on any device.
- Operational Variability – Each geographical site not only sits at a different location, it also operates differently. Different medical and administrative teams will use different devices and applications for similar needs. This has to do with existing infrastructure and endpoints, as well as plain old preferred or legacy practices. This requires a solution that can be adapted to various requirements.
- Remote Work Support – In addition to various sites, many healthcare employees are also working from home or traveling: to patients, conferences, hospitals, and other places. They need a solution that will allow them to securely connect from anywhere they are, at all times.
- BYOD – The healthcare industry is evolving towards BYOD, especially for remote doctors and out-sourced employees. Ensuring optimal and secure access to resources on unmanaged devices is challenging and complicated, and can be quite expensive. This requires a solution that can protect and connect any device, managed or unmanaged.
- Rapid Employee Onboarding – The healthcare sector employs a large number of people, including out-sourced and off-shore teams, and therefore requires the ability to quickly onboard new staff. This means new employees need immediate seamless access to training materials, healthcare records and internal systems. To answer this need, healthcare organizations need a solution that is quick and easy to set up, deploy and adopt.
- Support for Acquisitions and M&A – Some healthcare organizations frequently undergo mergers and acquisitions, which requires an integration of disparate IT systems and networks and the ability to onboard thousands of employees to new systems, quickly. This requires a solution that provides administrative control, can be quickly adopted and ensures a positive user experience.
- Supporting Access to a Variety of Apps – Healthcare personnel need access to a variety of systems, from basic productivity apps to printers and scanners to legacy applications. This requires a solution that can support a wide range of protocols and standards while safeguarding against data breaches and cyber threats.
- Security and Compliance – Healthcare organizations need to ensure the confidentiality of their connections and of sensitive patient data, while complying with stringent regulations like HIPAA. This requires a solution that protects data and is aligned with HIPAA regulations.
The Challenges of VDI
Some healthcare organizations have been using Citrix or another VDI solution for their access needs. However, VDI has not been able to address all healthcare organizational requirements in an optimal manner.
- Complex Setup and Management – Setting up a VDI environment is complicated and requires careful planning and configuration. The complexity increases with the scaling of the infrastructure, requiring specialized knowledge for effective management and troubleshooting.
- Cost – Implementing and maintaining a VDI solution can be expensive. The costs include licensing, infrastructure, ongoing maintenance and the need for skilled professionals to manage the system. These costs can be a significant barrier for organizations that need to prioritize resources for patient care.
- Performance Issues – User experience in a VDI environment can be affected by numerous factors such as network latency, bandwidth limitations and server performance. Ensuring a smooth and responsive experience for users, especially when sensitive data, patient communications and real-time decision making are involved, leaves little room for latency.
- Security Concerns – While a VDI provides robust security features, the complexity of the environment can introduce security challenges. Additionally, the nature of remote access to a virtual desktop, rather than remaining on-device, increases the risk of data breaches, if not properly managed. This could also impact the ability to meet compliance regulations.
- Compatibility Issues – Ensuring all applications work seamlessly in a virtualized environment can be challenging. Some applications, particularly older ones or those with specific hardware requirements, may not be fully compatible with the VDI, leading to user frustration and productivity loss.
- User Training and Support – Users unfamiliar with VDI may require training to effectively use the platform. Additionally, providing timely support for issues in a remote setup can be more complex than in traditional IT environments.
How a Secure Enclave Can Help the Healthcare Industry
Healthcare organizations need a simplified and less costly solution that supports secure remote access while eliminating the need for VDI or having to lock down every PC. A Secure Enclave is an innovative solution that is installed on a user’s computer where access is managed and all work and patient data is isolated and encrypted.
This approach enables protection of patient and health data without having to control the entire device. As a result, remote work is easily secured on any BYOD or unmanaged PC or Mac and healthcare organizations can meet compliance regulations like HIPAA.
Users can easily distinguish what’s in the Secure Enclave and what is not; work applications opened in the enclave are visually represented with a Blue Border™. The Blue Border ensures that all medical work activity is protected and secure. IT teams can implement configurable policies so that when users are working in the enclave, applications are subject to controls that govern actions like file access, browser usage, peripheral use, copy, paste, screen capture privileges, network access and more. There is also full control over where data is stored, so IT can wipe everything when users are offboarded.
Since applications are launched locally on the user’s laptop, there aren’t any performance issues because there’s no hosted environment. Users enjoy a native local experience with low latency. In terms of cost, there is no infrastructure needed to host and run applications.
Finally, deployment and onboarding is simplified as well. It’s as easy as clicking a link, allowing for hundreds and thousands of employees to all be onboarded in one week.
By choosing a Secure Enclave, healthcare organizations can easily:
- Allow secure access for users across geographical sites
- Support users’ differing operational needs
- Connect remote users at home or during travel
- Allow for BYOD and unmanaged devices
- Quickly onboard new employees
- Rapidly onboard acquired companies
- Support access to a wide variety of apps
- Meet security and HIPAA requirements
See how Venn’s Secure Enclave can help your healthcare organization.
