Top 5 reason why tablets are a favorable option for your next trip out of town:

1. Battery life: For many iPad users, the advertised battery life is about 10 hours. But many tests have shown that 6 is about what you can get out of it, and of course a lot less if you are watching videos or using wi-fi. Regardless, considering the lengthy battery life in comparison to a regular laptop, the tablets are an attractive choice for users looking not to be connected to a power source for too long.

2. Quick boot: As we’ve all experienced at some point, when you pull your laptop out of sleep mode or doing a fresh boot up, the system takes it a while to be fully loaded. This means that if you have an urgent email to write, you are most likely going to have to wait for the Windows / Linux splash screen to go away. But many of today’s tablets are just as quick as a smartphone, providing instand access to email and whatever applications you need in order complete urgent work.

3. Quick install: Selecting the right installer for your workstation operation system version requires some knowledge of your PC. It also means that some applications may not even be available for your version. But with many of the tablets and the existence of App Store/Marketplace and a single click installer, the simplicity and ease of application deployment on many of the tablets available today make them an increasingly attractive option.

4. Remote processing: As is the case many health care organizations, virtualizing environments, moving  desktops to data centers and going the way of the cloud is a new trend they’re exploring. This of course is in line with many of the capabilities of the tablets, which have apps that allow them direct access to a virtual desktop. Whether it is Citrix or VMware View, a user can have all the functionality that a standard business desktop with Windows has to offer directly from their device with full audio and video support.

5.Lightweight: For many of today’s leading laptop manufacturers, they recognized that users want lighter, more portable computers for ease of travel and use during a commute or on the go. But no matter how light or thin, it is very hard to compete with weight of iPads and tablets alike. They have been the ideal device for note taking, messaging, video conferencing, rich content viewing and even gaming.

This is where a hosted model, or infrastructure as a service (IaaS), becomes a more attractive alternative for hospital and health systems currently taking the steps toward EHR implementation. However, this framework will change the role of the IT department in-house, and this is an important distinction to make. With this model, the IT department will no longer be in the business of IT, but will instead be tasked with supporting the organization’s enterprise IT goals and objectives and ensuring that technology is there to improve efficiency within the IaaS model.

Top 7 reasons why hospitals why would consider IaaS for EHR implementation:

Faster resolution and support:

For many of the larger hospitals and health care systems, when implementing an EHR system across the different departments, the IT team spends a tremendous amount of time upgrading, troubleshooting and communicating with the EHR vendor to support the product and resolve technical issues. This creates a tremendous amount of additional work for the IT department. With a hosted or IaaS model, the vendor is fully responsible for maintaining the system, supporting it and ensuring uptime. This means that the hospital IT team spends less time troubleshooting and more time with end-users.

Less upfront capital:

Imagine you are a 500 bed hospital getting ready to implement a system like EPIC or Cerner. There are significant amount of capital investments that need to be made up-front, not only during the upgrade of the infrastructure that will support the system, but also with the additional resources needed to support it. Essentially, when a hospital decides to implement the IaaS model, they are changing the cost from a capital expense to an operational expense, where they are paying the vendors a monthly fee for the services and access to the system and support, which becomes a much more attractive option for many institutions.

Redundancy:

As the natural disasters that we have experienced in the recent months help to illustrate (i.e. tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes), it is critical to have system redundancy and continuous availability in case of system failure. This would mean that a hospital system will have to invest in a data center located in a different geographic area, which will allow them to switch systems quickly in the event they need to protect the hospital records and electronic patient data.

Focus on healthcare informatics:

Getting away from the business of learning and troubleshooting issues with a new EHR system and moving to providing business value through technology is what healthcare IT should be all about. With the quick availability of IaaS services, infrastructure delivered as a service, it enables IT to leverage and focus their time and resources in bringing innovations, solutions and improvements to the healthcare system.

Scalability:

IaaS providers offer a service model where you pay as you go, or as you grow. You can easily scale out the system as needed without any hardware upgrades, which can sometimes be as simple as submitting a request online for additional computing power or storage. And voila! The system can now accommodate additional users from a new hospital acquisition or outpatient practice.

Security:

Security is in the mind of every cloud computing adopter. Whether it is protecting sensitive intellectual property or patient medical information, many IaaS providers have implemented strong security practices and have been granted certifications such as ISO/..IEC 27001 and PCI. These have helped their customers meet the different regulatory and compliance requirements from HIPAA.

Less downtime during major upgrades:

Major upgrades have caused of a lot of headaches for IT folks. Requiring downtime during back-ups, coordinating with the vendors, scheduling onsite visits from vendors — these are all things that can easily be handled, more efficiently, by an EHR vendor in an offsite data center. The hosted model eliminates many of the challenges experienced during a local upgrade and shifts the responsibility and work from the organization and back to the EHR vendor.

Many health care executives and decision makers are beginning to see the benefits of the IaaS model and are starting to carefully evaluate what their IT departments could look like in the future. Employing the technologies and solutions that can help improve efficiency and cut operational costs, while transitioning IT from reactive support to a more proactive business/vendor partnership model.

There are several reasons why one should replace existing aging desktops with virtual ones:

Necessary Upgrade

Since Windows XP will no longer be supported and still many have delayed the upgrade due to the costly hardware requirements of Windows 7, a virtual environment is very appealing and cost effective since it will provide standardize virtual hardware across the board.

Centralized management

One value we can immediately see with VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) is the reduction in desktop support and maintenance. We can also reap the benefits of centralized data and ease of backup and DR. While in some cases group policy would resolve the issue of ensuring that all critical data on desktops is being stored on a central repository with virtual desktop we eliminate that pain point since all is stored on a SAN.

Hardware flexibility

With different applications come different hardware requirements. And with the virtual environment adding memory or storage has never been simpler. With just few clicks we can upgrade the memory and increase the storage capacity to meet the requirements of specific applications.

Security

With all the pressures of HIPAA compliancy and the need to secure the health records in a healthcare environment, VDI mitigates some of the risks associated with data breach. A VDI has the ability to lock down the image so that there is no access to USB on the desktop. It also ensures that nothing can get installed that is not approved by the administrators. Since the actual “desktop” unit does not store any data this means that if it is stolen there is no way for anyone to gain access to any.

Customized desktop images to meet the need of department

In most enterprise settings there is a standard image per department or teams. So when a new employee starts they are assigned a desktop. With a VDI environment we can use the same concept with the exception that this time the new employee is assigned a specific image with just few clicks.

Clearly there are several benefits to virtualization. Not only an IDN can centrally managed all the workstations but they can continue to focus on meaningful use and not on the mundane tasks related to desktop support. Of course traditionally Citrix had several of the benefits that virtualization has to offer, but with the some of the added benefits of Disaster recovery, data containment, ease of management, device independence it seems that VDI may just be what the doctor prescribed.

Original Article

Reda Chouffani is the Co-Founder of Biz Technology Solutions, Inc and an active Healthcare Information Technology writer for Healthcare IT Insider and TechTarget’s Health IT Exchange.

As kiosk technology gains acceptance, we are starting to see them in more places. Does this technology make sense for a medical practice setting? You bet it does.

Today more than ever, medical practice revenues are being squeezed from all sides and it is important to find new ways to streamline business and enhance patient care. So, what can a Kiosk do for your practice and your patients?

TYPICAL KIOSK FEATURES

• Registration and self check-in
  • Capture medical history
  • Verify insurance information
  • Verify demographics
  • Signing of consent forms

• Insurance eligibility check in
• Co-pay, balance pay, and deductible pay collections
• Appointment scheduling
• Phone directory and location paths within your building
• Patient surveys

Key Benefits

Efficiency

• Can interface to your PMS/EHR to update patient information with minimum staff intervention
• Eliminates redundant data entry and the management of paper based forms
• Rich reporting tools
• Decreases patient wait time
• Multi-lingual content

Enhance Patient Services

Eliminate Identity Theft (Red Flag Rules)

• Recognize patient using palm biometric recognition

Minimize Risk

• Patient enters data so there is less room for error
• HIPAA compliant

Increase Revenue

• Collect payments on the day of service to minimize your AR.

Physical Form Factor and Cost

Kiosks come in various hardware form factors to accommodate your office and patient ergonomics. For example:  A floor standing device , a hand held device (similar to a laptop, a tablet PC or an iPad), or a countertop unit that sits on your reception desk.

Cost varies from $3,000.00 a device to $15,000.00.  Yes, this may sound expensive but think about your return on investment and the long term benefits to your business and your patients!