The healthcare industry is undergoing a massive digital transformation driven by the need to improve patient outcomes, increase operational efficiency, and keep up with evolving technology trends. At the heart of this transformation is the need to modernize healthcare technology, a process that requires a strategic, multifaceted approach.
The challenge comes when transformation must be done on a shoestring, as it is for most hospitals. To save money, you have to spend, but most healthcare technology leaders have limited budgets. Today, with mergers and acquisitions, many hospitals have created networks of hospitals, each of which typically uses different systems.
As a result, integrations that should take six months end up taking five years as budget-constrained CIOs try to scale systems and solutions that aren’t flexible enough to accommodate multi-tenant and multi-location facilities. Unfortunately, decade-old solutions and systems never evolve to support modern infrastructure.
Take traditional hospital EHR systems as an example. Until recently, most of these solutions were built on inflexible architectures with limited support for out-of-platform data. These EHR systems had poor interoperability and assumed data ownership belonged to the provider, not the individual. Today, the massive increase in personal health data from IoT devices, advances in healthcare research with AI, and hospital consolidation call for modernization.
Modern EHR systems need flexibility, portability, and security to take full advantage of advances in technology, simplify future integrations, and support the future evolution of healthcare. Two architectures suited to this modern state are containers and cloud-native platforms, yet not a single hospital is running either of these architectures today.
There aren’t many freestanding hospitals left, and they’re on track to not exist in 20 years. The reality for most hospitals is that they would need to rip out and replace their data centers to be competitive, but in most cases, that’s just not realistic. Don’t get me wrong, we’d love for organizations to move to more modern infrastructure, but the reality for many is that it’s just too costly.
So how can you prioritize evolving your systems to run like a modern data center when funds are tight?
Prioritizing Security in Medical Technology Modernization
One of the most important aspects of modernizing healthcare technology is prioritizing security. The sensitivity of patient data and the high-risk clinical environment make the healthcare industry a prime target for cybercriminals. According to IBM, the healthcare industry experienced the highest average data breach costs of any industry in 2022, at $10.1 million per breach.
Hospitals are lacking a new level of security technology that is required for today’s cyber threats. Hospital security needs to encompass everything, not just the data center. Zero Trust, a security framework that limits attacks by not trusting anyone, anywhere, is a goal that hospitals should always strive for, even if it’s unattainable.
To mitigate exposure to these risks, healthcare organizations must adopt a comprehensive security strategy that encompasses both technical and human elements. The first step is to create three key frameworks: Zero Trust, Data Protection/Ransomware, and Data Governance/Compliance. Implementing these frameworks will dramatically change how data is accessed, how it is manipulated, and how users and access are verified. Today’s advanced monitoring mechanisms help protect sensitive data, identify anomalous data operations, and prevent unauthorized access attempts through automation, preventing these types of exposures.
In addition to technical measures, healthcare organizations should also prioritize security education and employee awareness. Cybersecurity training programs help staff recognize and respond to threats such as phishing and social engineering attacks. By fostering a culture of security awareness, healthcare organizations can significantly reduce the risk of data breaches and other security incidents.
The Importance of Data Governance and Locality to Mitigate Risk
Effective management and governance of data is the foundation for successful healthcare technology modernization. As healthcare organizations collect and process an ever-increasing amount of patient data, it is critical to establish a robust data governance framework. Without clear data governance, it is impossible to successfully build a security platform for the digital hospital.
These policies must address data privacy, security, and compliance requirements and ensure sensitive information is handled in accordance with relevant regulations such as HIPAA and GDPR. Additionally, healthcare organizations must consider the importance of data locality and ensure patient data is stored and processed within appropriate geographic boundaries to comply with data sovereignty laws and mitigate the risk of cross-border data transfers. Healthcare organizations must determine how and where data will be stored.
Typically, the best guidance is to store data on a platform with well-designed cyber security and data validation capabilities. Ransomware protection and immutable snapshots are just two features essential for data cyber protection in today’s world. It is also important to design a coherent plan to classify and protect data based on risk and value defined in a data governance framework.
By prioritizing data governance, protection, and locality, healthcare organizations can build trust with patients, demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements, and reduce the risk of data breaches and other security incidents.
Adoption of AI-based solutions in healthcare
Once you have defined and confident in your data management processes, another key aspect of modernizing your healthcare technology is the adoption of AI-based solutions. Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform many aspects of healthcare, from clinical decision-making to operational efficiency, but AI is only as good as the data that is fed to it.
Healthcare providers have many opportunities to leverage AI without having to redesign their entire datacenter. AI is being embedded into current technologies across the industry, improving capabilities and providing more value to organizations. These AI-enabled solutions not only deliver incredible insights and increased efficiency, but also provide the best technology to secure your digital transformation efforts.
Incorporating AI into your environment can take monitoring and decision-making to the next level with AI-driven automation and data protection frameworks based on predefined policies. Identity management tools are also evolving thanks to AI and are becoming a must-have for hospitals. These tools provide users with access to content that applies only to them and flag any suspicious activity. Even if a hacker gains access to one employee’s identity, AI monitoring and enforcement policies will identify them and lock them out, preventing them from accessing anywhere in the network.
Many AI security technologies are already very advanced. Take for example a tool we all use: antivirus. Traditionally, this tool uses machine learning to automatically collect and extract data from its user base to train all of its security modules. As new malware samples are found, these products are automatically updated with new models, providing critical up-to-date protection. Today’s modern AI-based antivirus can improve security by enhancing threat detection, response capabilities, and overall cybersecurity. With new capabilities like advanced threat detection and real-time monitoring, AI can now analyze data for anomalous patterns and behaviors to spot exposures that have not yet been identified, allowing for earlier threat detection.
Building for the future
For hospitals, protecting digital assets is essential to maintaining patient privacy, ensuring operational continuity, and mitigating risks such as cyber attacks and data breaches. Hospitals can significantly reduce vulnerabilities by implementing a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy with robust access controls, encryption, network monitoring, and incident response plans.
Ongoing cybersecurity training for all staff is also essential to building a culture of vigilance against evolving threats. From front-line clinicians to IT administrators, every employee has a role to play in protecting sensitive medical records, intellectual property, and the digital infrastructure on which modern healthcare depends. An investment in cybersecurity is an investment in patient safety and trust.
Photo: ipopba, Getty Images
Derek Grant has served as EchoStor’s Vice President of Technology since 2020. In this role, Derek works closely with EchoStor customers, working with emerging technologies to drive business ROI from technology. Prior to joining EchoStor, Derek held various roles at Dell EMC.
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