There are few fields that deal in the kind of sensitive information that healthcare does. Patient records, if breached, can leave hospitals and similar facilities swimming in legal and financial ramifications. It seems like it shouldn't be that hard to use best practices when handling these kinds of files, but the quest for convenience can be rife with temptation.
Email is one of the biggest offenders in this sphere. People swear by email as a messaging and document transmission tool, but the encryptions commonly used to protect it have been found time and again to be ineffective. As such, there are regulations in place that are designed to prevent email's use in healthcare – but that doesn't stop professionals in this field from using it.
The answer here is not to turn away from modern technology, but to find new ways of embracing it. Currently, the fax machine is the preferred means of electronic file transmission. This doesn't mean, however, that healthcare organizations are bound to aging legacy solutions. One way to enable professionals in an acceptable way is to use an Internet fax service. This method takes all the security of the fax and marries it with the power of mobility.
Understanding what patients want
There has been a pervasive attitude in IT departments over the years regarding what end users want. Many tech pros believe that other staffers in the organization don't know what they want. But the consumerization of IT that has occurred over the past few years makes this argument invalid.
"Too often we see information systems organizations driving and delivering products and services without first understanding what to deliver," wrote InformationWeek contributor Todd Dunn. "One great companion tool for enabling the customer empathy mindset is an empathy map."
In healthcare, this means coming to a simple realization: Doctors and patients alike want their documents to stay protected. Email has clearly let people down on this front, but the fax machine is still going strong. But it's not the hardware that makes faxing valuable – it's the concept.
By taking fax technology and reformatting it to work in an Internet portal on the computer, faxing can be done from anywhere. Not only that, but the excessive printing and scanning that is required of manual faxing is no longer essential. Services like fax over IP will not only increase satisfaction and productivity, but do so in a way that doesn’t forget about security.
Quelling concern
According to HealthIT Security contributor Elizabeth Snell, recent studies have shown that patients are concerned about the electronic nature of modern medical records. In order for them to be the most comfortable, the organizations that they frequent need to be seen as trustworthy. One great way to instill that kind of confidence is to pursue secure and reliable document transmission services.
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