How digitalisation makes the Healthcare Industry more efficient

In the Healthcare industry, a lot of changes have happened. We moved from having paper-based reports to just digitalising them into a cloud or a server on-premise.

The beginning of the digital era

The positive impact of PC’s in the Healthcare industry was significant. Doctors can log all their entries easily by using a PC and have prognoses calculated by an algorithm which in turn, has modernized the industry. Many governments nowadays have an interconnected system between their hospitals. What does this mean exactly? Well if you go to a hospital in one part of the country, they will be able to see all your records of another hospital in the country. This has made prognoses and proper care much easier. With their insurance card, they can see that the person has an allergy towards bees for instance. In consequence, the right medication can be given to the patient without long times and hinder a life-threatening situation. 

From a Hospital perspective, processes have been automated data gathering has become easier and the cost to store this data has significantly decreased. Most hospitals make use of hybrid storage solutions. Which means sensitive data is stored on-prem (On-premises is the software and technology that is located within the physical confines of an enterprise – often in the company’s data center) and not so sensitive data is stored on the cloud or with a 3rd party.
It did not stop with the PC’s, we have found new ways to use technology to our advantage and that’s why Hospitals did not wait and have or are moving to become fully digitalised entities.

Tablets & Smartphones

Often in today’s time, you will have nurses or Doctors walk into a room with their tablet or personal device. This allows every employee to access files about patients in seconds without having to always double-check with the original files on a computer or in the storage facility.
Such efforts toward digitalisation have brought along many benefits, however, it lacks one important aspect: seamless access to applications.

Security standards

As the industry deals with highly sensitive data it is important to see this from an IT perspective. There are solutions out there which are prone to breaches or not up to the newest security standards. Perhaps you may have heard of the Kerberos Authentication which is the default authorization protocol as of today. Used by Microsoft Windows and implementations of Kerberos exist in Apple OS, FreeBSD, UNIX, and Linux.

In simple words it comes down to the following: 

The Kerberos authenticator releases an authentication ticket which is generated locally without having to store passwords locally or sending them over the internet. This involves a trusted 3rd-party which does so through a built on symmetric-key cryptography. 

You have a ticket — your proof of identity encrypted with a secret key for the particular service requested – — on your local machine; so long as it’s valid, you can access the requested service that is within a Kerberos realm. To fully understand the steps with Kerberos, have a look at this brief video.

As this technology started to exist since the 2000’s people may argue that it is obsolete. This is quite the contrary as this uses extremely strong encryption algorithms to protect passwords and authentication tickets. An interesting calculation showed that any attack on the current encryption protocol of Kerberos would take longer than our solar system has left to live. 

Painful logins

Commonly different applications are needed to log information. Is it an infection? Then log it with application X. Is it a fracture? Log it with application Y. 

These log-ins are a good method to keep information secure and safe. Especially in the health  industry it is essential to keep patients’ information safe. These applications all need to be authenticated in order to get access to sensitive patient information. Having to log in multiple times a day on these applications takes time and may frustrate a busy Doctor/Nurse. Not to forget the fact that if they have forgotten their passwords, they have to find a computer and change it from there.

Speaking of password resets, these applications, for security reasons, are often times programmed to delete passwords every 30,60 or 90 days. Every time this happens the doctor needs to run to IT. . To be honest, in today’s busy times where there is a lack of such professionals, one hour could have a huge impact on many lives.

The United Kingdom’s Hospitals and Logins

It is true that the possibility to access files from anywhere has already facilitated work for many professionals, but these employees seek easy access and not technology disabling them to have a seamless workflow. A small example of a frustrating story is the NHS in the United Kingdom which has as per January 2020 experienced difficulties with its IT infrastructure. To wrap up the article by BBC news, the UK’s NHS IT-Infrastructure is old and outdated, nevertheless, they have been upgrading to Tablets and new devices without updating the software used. In this old infrastructure, the software prompts every single employee for their password and login detail.
This not only for one application but for about 15 different ones. These passwords are usually different for the respective applications making it a real pain point to log into the desired applications. Employees complaining about the system was an everyday practice as it was a real mess to get access to files. The government has finally stepped forward and has set aside 40 million Pounds to cut login-times. This is only one country of the many who experience this problem. If you ask Doctors across Europe what they dislike about their IT infrastructure you will often hear it is the process of login in.

Fix the login situation

What if we could offer you a solution which builds onto your Enterprise mobility management platform? Resolving your employees’ painful logins within a couple of days? Making it possible for your employees to reset applications from tablets and phones? Well, Hypergate Authenticator does exactly that. It removes the need to log in and allows you to reset passwords on the go. It cuts login times significantly and does the whole login process for you when you logged in once in the morning. Well as an infrastructure administrator you can set your own parameters.

Hypergate leverages industry standards like Kerberos to provide the best possible user experience without compromising on security.