Delivering healthy patients, networks and bottom lines
Technology is continually transforming healthcare. AI, robotics and smart voice assistants are evolving quickly. Mobile health and virtual diagnosing are being integrated as standard tools. And apps are being used for just about everything. Clinicians use them to get patient updates, check on potential drug interactions and otherwise treat patients. Administrators use them to get correct billing codes. Visitors use them for wayfinding. The list goes on.
As a result, ways of managing and securing the networks that power healthcare progress are evolving, too.
The key to enabling the myriad healthcare demands, IT applications and more? To operating seamlessly today while laying the foundation for tomorrow? Interoperability, stringent security and a network that’s up to the task.
Although new tools can help, sometimes a new approach to design, deployment and management is needed. For example, an intent-based network (IBN) that is open, extensible and programmable, that constantly learns, adapts and protects all users, can be one part of the solution
But that’s not the only option…and it’s only a small piece of a very interesting, much larger picture.
Our healthcare IT specialists will work with you to learn about your hospital’s or healthcare practice’s overall objectives and priorities. Following an assessment, we’ll provide you with recommendations for achieving your desired business outcomes. Budgetrespectful. Obligation free. Manufacturer agnostic.
Please contact us to explore ways we can help.
“The old network was like the circulatory system, pumping blood to and away from the heart using a series of pipes. The next-generation network will work more like the nervous system, taking in sensory information, learning from it and changing its behavior based on its sensory environment.”
– Barbara Casey Director of Healthcare and Life Sciences, Cisco
After investing millions in EMR implementation, healthcare administrators and IT specialists are feeling vulnerable. Ransomware thieves are drawn to medical facilities because they can’t afford any downtime and hackers target EMRs (Electronic Medical Records a.k.a. Electronic Health Records) because of the huge fines associated with records going public.
Adding to the challenge we are, as mentioned, living in the age of the app. Although really helpful, apps also create countless ways for cybercriminals to crash your security defences and, ultimately, your network. It only takes one unsecured wireless printer, or a doctor using an unprotected, private smartphone on the hospital network, to open a security hole that a hacker can exploit. Once in the network, a hacker will seek to maximise the impact.
Unfortunately, the nature of hospitals and healthcare in general, is that there are many weak points.
Vulnerabilities can also be found in patient care devices such as infusion pumps and heart monitors. If they get hacked, you’re not just worrying about your network, you are worrying about your patient’s life. That’s the kind of thing that keeps IT professionals up at night.
While it is easy to assume all attacks come from outside the organisation, that is not necessarily the case.
Starting with an assessment of your network and protocols, we work with you to identify – and correct – areas where you are most vulnerable. Where needed, we will also do penetration testing to satisfy your insurance carrier requirements.
Sometimes it’s not a hacker who wreaks havoc. Sometimes it’s the network itself that lets you down. Why? Unfortunately, not all organisations fully consider the infrastructure upon which the highly complex healthcare systems have to operate. To paraphrase Shakespeare, “For want of the right switch and router, the EMR was lost”.
Again, we have solutions that will help prevent you from losing anything – including sleep.
We all know that patient care starts with the network. It connects everything and everyone, from medical devices and apps, to clinicians, diagnosticians and nursing staff, to community resources, to patients and their caregivers.
The expectation is 100% connectivity from wherever they are, and the ability to access data 100% of the time – especially in the middle of the night. We have tools that make this possible.
As the patient care continuum continues to grow, it’s becoming evident that not all players are at the same level in terms of network infrastructure, security tools and practices and level of experience.
Those of you responsible for broader networks know you will be taking a lead role and may be trying to determine the best way forward. For those of you looking for extra advice, or a sounding board, please contact; we would be happy to provide input.
The moment a patient gets referred to a specialist from a family health practitioner, or visits an ER, or gets admitted to hospital, a line-up of caregivers starts to form.
For a family practice, that might involve 5-15 people, including community care providers. Over a 3-4 day hospital stay, however, the average patient may interact with as 40 or more different care providers. Each needs access to critical information, sometimes within a heartbeat. Literally.
Communication errors and resulting errors or delays in treatment, can have grave consequences. Obviously, it’s imperative that networks function optimally 24/7 – and that all involved in patient care be able to access information at all times, regardless of how they connect to the network.
As increasing numbers of patients, guests, visitors and front-line staff use mobile devices to perform their jobs, and increasing numbers of people bring their own devices to use, density problems can also impact patient care. When bedside tablets lag, or doctors can’t check apps that talk about drug interactions, and therapists are unable to quickly coordinate patient appointments with multiple treatment providers, it’s a problem… and IT hears about it.
You even hear about it when guests get lost because they can’t access use wayfinding apps and patients are unable to watch TV or use their tech toys. It’s not just about the admission experience.
The number of patient-facing apps is also increasing exponentially. Patients are being encouraged to take more responsibility for their own healthcare. To support this, apps are being introduced that give patients and their families access to lots of information (most of which needs to be secured) and tools to let them coordinate care and appointments with healthcare workers more easily. This adds another layer of complexity to already sophisticated network demands.
With this escalation of connectivity requirements, it becomes even more critical that the optimal ICT infrastructure be in place.
We work with hospitals and smaller practices and are used to the types of challenges you face. In the unlikely event that we have not yet solved a problem similar to yours, we have health care professionals and health IT experts we can call on to lend a hand.
Working with you, we will ensure your network not only working optimally, but the many people who need to connect to it and your electronic health records (a.k.a. EMRs) will be able to do so securely and consistently whenever they need to, wherever they are.
Clinicians and other members of a patient’s healthcare team have always consulted with one another, relied on one another. Today, care teams have expanded. Not only are more people collaborating, but they’re doing so from multiple locations.
Whether connecting with one another in meetings, through messaging, in online video conferences, or whatever is best at the time, everyone needs to review patient records in real time. Teams must also be able to share documents, access requisitions, scheduling and billing programs… to be able to work as though in the same room.
Tools such as Zoom, WebEx and others integrate with Microsoft Office programs and hospital apps and let teams work efficiently and effectively. Equally important, these tools protect the security and privacy of patient, clinician, practitioner and hospital data. This enables you to be compliant with all Canadian Data Protection regulations, including the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) as well as your local Personal Health Information Protection Acts.
For more information, please check out the following links and white papers:
- https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/industries/healthcare/remote-care-collaboration.html
- https://www.webex.com/webexremotehealth.html
- Zoom PIPEDA white paper
- Zoom for Healthcare
Telehealth is more than a call-in phone service people use to get advice from nurse practitioners. It has also gone beyond the early days when it simply provided long-distance support and health-related education for patients, public health employees, health administrators and clinical practitioners.
Today, we have true telemedicine.
Technology now makes it possible for virtual diagnosing and monitoring of patients who are housebound or living in rural areas. It enables healthcare providers in remote parts of Canada to collaborate with colleagues across the country and around the globe.
Many Canadians live in areas where weather prevents them from getting to a hospital for 3 – 6 months of the year. For these patients, local clinics which can access diagnostic tools remotely, and get specialist consultations via videoconferencing tool such as WebEx and Zoom can be the difference between timely treatment and unfortunate outcomes.
We work with clinics, hospital and practitioners whose patients and healthcare teams live “up north”, so we are well-versed in responding to virtual care challenges.
We also know that practitioners worry that nuances in tone and posture that a doctor sees when treating a patient in person get lost long distance. Cisco offers a cognitive collaboration product that helps fill in this gap.
When people use WebEx to provide care remotely, artificial intelligence and machine learning programs can be running in the background to collect data that will help users have a more realistic, almost lifelike experience. By using facial recognition and voice assistant, the program can start to identify what someone is really feeling. As we all know, the word “fine” can have many different meanings. These tools help clinicians pick up on cues they would’ve seen in person, but might’ve been too subtle to be picked up on an electronic transmission.
Please contact us to learn how we can help your TEAMS leverage technology to enhance the long-distance care they provide.
One of the biggest changes in healthcare over the past 10 – 15 years has been the integration of information technology into care delivery – and the pace of change is accelerating.
Innovations in clinical applications are improving patient care, but are only as good as the network providing the backbone information. All too often IT infrastructure gaps get in the way.
In 2015, Cisco introduced the infrastructure maturity assessment, working with 30 major acute care hospitals. The insights gained by benchmarking hospitals’ journeys in rolling out information infrastructure laid the foundation for processes be adopted worldwide.
When HIMSS Analytics took over development of the assessment three years later, and built the Infrastructure Adoption Model (INFRAM), Cisco was part of the pilot program’s international collaboration team.
This knowledge led to the creation of products and services designed especially for the health care industry – which is why we are trusted partner for hospitals and family practices in Canada.
The INFRAM provides a framework for determining how prepared a hospital facility is to support existing and planned process rollouts of their digital infrastructure. If you are interested in learning more, please click here to hear Shanti Gidwani, the National Director for Healthcare at Cisco talking about advances in healthcare IT infrastructure.
It seems kind of obvious to say that today, all businesses, organisations, educational institutions, government entities and healthcare providers rely on applications throughout their digital worlds… but it’s true. It also means that IT executives and network administrators must ensure that all applications are working optimally 24/7, are not creating any problems on the network. And if things do go wrong, it’s imperative you be able to fix things quickly.
We work with AppDynamics because its system gives you visualization of the entire application landscape. From one dashboard, you can see everything from the code driving every application, to how it’s impacting users on their devices, including mobile browsers – to going deeper into the infrastructure to see how things are performing at a network level.
Artificial intelligence is key to the approach being taken by AppDynamics, and AI has been a key part of the product from its inception, so the program can be more proactive and predictive about potential issues that can occur in the application environment. This means you spend less time searching for and fixing problems. It also means you have more time for your day-to-day activities, making it possible to carve out more time to drive innovation and improve the user experience for clinicians, diagnosticians, faculty members, administrators, support workers, patient and the many other stakeholders involved in their care.
Please contact us to learn more.
Some IT professionals believe that having secure firewalls is enough to protect data. In this day and age, that’s not enough.
All data – particularly clinical, patient, personal and research data – should be encrypted, whether it is at rest or in motion. It doesn’t matter where the data is stored when it is at rest – whether that is in a datacentre, a storage array, on a server, in the cloud, or on a PC, laptop, mobile phone, tablet or any other device.
If it contains patient or healthcare data, encryption is essential.
Data also needs to be encrypted while it is being transmitted. If it is moving across the same network, it should be encrypted prior to transmission. If it is moving across multiple networks, which will happen as hospitals and clinics work more closely with other healthcare providers in their communities, the minimum level of security should be SSL/TLS encryption. Preferably, you should be using a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which creates a secure channel across which data can be sent.
We work with other hospitals and healthcare providers. Please contact us to learn how we can help you protect your data and reputation.
Today, a Central Data Repository (CDR) is critical to the functioning of all health teams. Administrators rely on big data and data analytics to gain insights on practitioner performance. Researchers rely on quality information to develop new drugs and protocols, track clinical trials and make cutting-edge medical advancements. Governments use the data to track the health of various populations, the spread of disease, as well as to identify people at risk so that funds can be allocated appropriately.
Thanks to Bluetooth connectivity, all patient data can be updated to the CDR instantly, saving doctors and other health team members time when treating patients, reducing error rates and making it possible to identify trends amongst patients receiving similar care.
It can, however, be challenging to ensure that the right people can access necessary data when needed. Data interoperability will become increasingly critical as health TEAMS work more closely together to provide cost effective, personalized, patient-centred care.
Please contact us to learn how to easily and securely use data from various sources.
It is estimated that over 1 million new devices will go online every hour in 2020 and beyond – and that nearly 20% of them will be related to healthcare in some way shape or form. That’s a staggering number. It also one that gives IT professionals nightmares because of the many paths that creates for cyber attackers to infiltrate your network and wreak havoc.
Electronic Health Records (also referred to as Electronic Medical Records) and hospital/clinic networks are the obvious targets. The things we all take great care to protect.
It’s widely known that emails created vulnerability, and that printers are often compromised, so many organisations have solid practices and protocols in place to shore up typical office weak spots.
Where processes can become less defined, however, is in the area of apps. Applications are being adopted at different rates by different practices – and there is often little consistency from one facility to another about how apps are vetted, integrated, or used in patient care or for admin purposes.
In some hospitals, clinicians use them actively to get patient updates, check on new drugs and potential drug interactions and otherwise treat patients. Administrators use them to get the correct billing codes and visitors to the facility use them to for wayfinding.
Thanks to Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE), clinicians and other health care practitioners also have access to myriad devices that need very little energy to communicate with each other over short distances, and so are being used increasingly frequently.
Infusion pumps, heart monitors, blood glucose monitors, pulse oximeters and the hundreds of other wireless medical devices that help diagnose injuries and disease, administer meds and transmit critical information to healthcare providers have become commonplace. They can also leave your network vulnerable.
And if they get hacked you not just worrying about your network, you are worrying about the life of a patient. Which is another thing that keeps Healthcare IT professionals up at night.
99% of all malware and ransomware enters via your web server or email. Even with the best policies in place, and regular training, it just takes one moment of inattention – or a really tricky hacker – and someone in your organisation will click on the wrong link. Chaos ensues. Maybe not today, but definitely at some point not too far down the road.
Microsoft Office 365 has become the standard productivity platform, so it is an attractive target for attackers. Luckily, the good guys know this and are on guard. We offer solutions, such as Cisco’s AMP among others, that block mail coming in from suspicious URLs and offer automatic mailbox remediation that removes the threat before the email can be opened.
You can also use AMP and to guard against malware in outgoing emails, so that your company does not face loss of IP or domain reputation.
Add in Threat Grid and you have complete tools for file reputation scoring and blocking, file sandboxing and file retrospection for continuous analysis of threats.
To learn more about Cisco’s comprehensive Email Security Solution, please click here.
Or please contact us to learn about other options.
With ever-escalating cyber security challenges, being an IT professional also means being a security and risk management expert. We often hear, “We have good firewalls and security tools and protocols in place, so why do I need a security assessment?”
Why?
The short answer: Things are evolving so quickly that you may be vulnerable in ways unimaginable short while ago. Another big reason: Your cybersecurity insurance may require one every six months to be valid.
The biggest reason of all: The consequences for allowing anything to happen to your Electronic Health Records (or EMRs, if you prefer) are serious. So are the penalties.
What is a security assessment?
Security assessments are periodic exercises that check for vulnerabilities in your IT operating systems and software programs, protocols and processes.
Assessments generally include the following three key elements:
- 1)Vulnerability Assessment
In a Vulnerability Assessment, a tech expert will assess your assets and public facing systems for weaknesses or security gaps. For example, the examination might reveal there are unprotected workstations or devices on the network, or applications that are not up-to-date, which may leave your whole network open to compromise. Or there may be inconsistencies in your BYOD policies and how employees are using their personal devices on your system. - 2)Security Posture Review
A Security Posture Review is a non-invasive process. A security expert reviews your policies and procedures to assess your current level of network and cybersecurity and that makes recommendations to help better prepare and protect your organisation. This will often include employing training suggestions. - 3)Penetration Testing
A Penetration Test, often referred to as a “Pen Test”, is usually used in conjunction with a Vulnerability Assessment. With your permission, we will try to hack various parts of your system, using various tools. We can also engage in some social engineering -related testing to get a sense of how likely your employees can be compromised potentially causing your system to be breached.
At the end of your security assessment regardless of what route you choose or where potential problems are found, you will receive a full threat assessment report identifying what needs to be done with an assigned priority level, and a comprehensive improvement plan. All while keeping your budgets in mind.
As part of this we will also assess your back-up and restore capabilities. In healthcare today, end users, expect access to data and applications at all times with no downtime or data loss. We find that many organisations back-up their systems regularly, but have not tested to see how effectively or quickly they can be back up and running if disaster strikes.
The goal should be to deliver a recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) of less than 15 minutes for all applications and data. We are able to do this with Veeam, which is one of the Cisco products we offer.
We will also try to give you financial assessment of what might be at risk if you choose not to proceed. With PIPEDA being enforced more strongly than ever before, as well as the requirement to disclose if there has been a breach, you need to make sure that you are compliant – and that you have a plan in place for protecting your network.
As you will see from the Mackenzie Vaughan Hospital example that follows, the connected hospital is here today – in part the result of vision Cisco had years ago.
In the smart clinic or hospital, every and a point is connected, and every device communicates automatically with the Central Data Repository (CDR), securely updating Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) in real time.
All members of the patient’s healthcare team have access to critical information whenever it’s needed, wherever they are. As tests are ordered, or results received, EMRs are immediately updated. Ditto when medications are prescribed or dispensed, or vitals measured by smart machines, or observations noted by nursing staff. Any time any kind of an assessment is made, or a referral requested, or anything in between, it gets recorded accurately and automatically – everyone on the team knows immediately.
This brings as much peace of mind to clinical practitioners and hospital administrators as it does to patients and their families. Why? Because it gives the patient a better experience and a greater possibility for positive outcome.
To make all this happen requires a solid network, the incorporation of technology such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and secure, reliable connectivity for all life-critical devices. When a moment’s transmission delay can have grave consequences, it’s essential to work with experts.
Please contact us to learn how you can start to connect your facility, regardless of what system you have in place today.
The new Mackenzie Vaughan Hospital, located minutes away from Canada’s Wonderland has been designed with the patient and visitor in mind. Cisco, one of our key partners, was instrumental from a tech point of view.Information kiosks and smart phone applications can be used to make appointments, register their arrival at the hospital or clinic in get information about the various medical and nonmedical services in the building.
To help with wayfinding, there are windows at each elevator so people can orient themselves.
An Integrated Bedside Solution (IBS) gives physicians and staff members immediate access to patients’ Electronic Health Records. Combined with the smart mobile clinical messaging and alert system, better collaboration among the healthcare teams is possible – leading to better patient outcomes.
Electronic status boards in the patient care area displays all information pertinent to treatment and automatically updates whenever new information or test results are received.
Various metrics processing standard of care are measured automatically and assess – or even hand hygiene machines that will let administrators track which doctors are washing their hands between patients, which ones aren’t! It’s a smart system in more ways than one.
The same system also lets the patient have some control over meal selection, lights in room temperature. It also acts as the patient’s entertainment system and communication lifeline to the outside world.
This videoconferencing system also has automatic translation capabilities. This means that doctors, nurses, technicians and others be able to treat patients from all countries without risk of important symptoms being missed because of a language barrier.
This new smart hospital, which is going to be open in 2020 is all kinds of no longer futuristic things. In his talk yesterday was talking about hand hygiene machines and how you can track which doctors are washing their hands and which ones aren’t. Those will prove to be some very interesting metrics, I’m sure.
To read more about this new smart hospital, please see:
https://www.mackenziehealth.ca/Modules/News/index.aspx?feedId=0dd022c2-8647-4d23-b3d5-842f55903b86&newsId=fbf1077f-4d13-4c7b-bd60-f67a0dd40f54
Asset Tracking
In healthcare, one of the biggest uses of IOT is in asset management and tracking. According to a 2019 Cisco survey, bottom-line savings could be +25% by 2030.
As budgets shrink, and patient loads expand, hospital administrators are under tremendous pressure to ensure funds are used to best advantage.
All physical assets need to be tracked using IOT. Automating the process can reduce inventory errors and ensure that equipment is serviced on time and remains an optimal working order. Evaluating the data collected against other metrics will enable hospitals to replace outdated equipment before operational errors can result.
On a more practical note, tracking using sensors and cameras can actually help hospitals operate more efficiently, but more cost-effectively in other ways, too. It’s not unusual for ward staff to hoard equipment, so they have it to provide care for their patients when needed.
Wheelchairs and infusion pumps tend to be the items that get hidden away the most, requiring additional capital expenditures. Introducing tech in this area can help the overall bottom picture.
RFID tags and other sensors can also be used to ensure supplies are used before their expiry date. For instance, tags on medications can be used to monitor the location, temperature and quantities left for each drug.
Sensors on blood bags can ensure that the blood stored and transported correctly, and that blood and anti-coagulants are properly mixed to prevent coagulation.
Please ask us how we can help you track your assets using precise location technology.
Effective Staff Utilization
Large family practices, independent clinics and hospitals face chronic shortages in all nurse categories. Until recently, Personal Support Workers (PSW) were employed primarily in the community or in rehabilitation and palliative care units. Today, PSWs positions can be found throughout hospitals as well as in clinical settings.
Even still, hospitals always face staff shortages during times of mass-casualty accidents, disease outbreaks and other major emergencies.
To ensure optimal deployment of these human assets, RFID tags are being embedded in ID cards to help track staff with facility. Administrators can look at need patterns and better plan for the busy periods – and when the unexpected happens, staff can be quickly and effectively deployed via various communication technologies. No need to hunt people down. No chance of messages being mis-relayed.
For hospital team members, as can also provide some reassurance. If a patient turns out to be carrying a virulent virus, a bad infection or something else contagious, and makes it easier to track down healthcare team members who may have come into contact with the person and initiate appropriate protocols as soon as possible. It also makes it easier to stop something nasty in its tracks.
Please contact us to learn how IOT tools can help improve your staffing situations.
Sensors can be used for life-supporting implants, preventive measures, long-term monitoring of disabled or ill patients. Healthcare organizations like insurance companies need real-time, reliable, and accurate diagnostic results provided by sensor systems that can be monitored remotely, whether the patient is in a hospital, clinic, or at home.
IOT can also be used to track patients and their information.RFID tags and other types of sensors can be embedded in a patient’s wristband and used to track vitals such as blood glucose levels, respiration rates, heartbeat strength and frequency, etc.
This information is then sent immediately to a Central Data Repository (CDR), where it is combined with other relevant information such as age, height, weight, medications, medical conditions, procedures and other important data as part of the Electronic Health Record (a.k.a. Electronic Medical Record or EMR).
This enables staff time on routine tasks to be reduced, while permitting patients’ data to be tracked in a timely manner. It also makes it possible for all members of a patient’s healthcare team to remotely monitor vital parameters whether the patient is in hospital, at home, in hospice care or elsewhere.
AI can help detect anomalies and ensure important changes in patients’ conditions are noted immediately.
Intelligent jackets and other wearable tech are also being used for similar purposes.
Regardless of what type of sensors are being used, there are many other applications that are improving patient experience and improving patient outcomes. A couple of examples:
Patients with dementia or acquired brain injuries can be tracked if they somehow manage to wander off their ward.
Pregnant patients can await diagnostic tests well away from people who might be sick.
Infants can be monitored more easily while being held, enabling healthcare providers to get more accurate readings.
Ambulatory and pre-op patients can wait in more comfortable sitting areas, saving bed space and improving the customer experience.
There is no shortage of ways IOT can be used – and many of these ways help alleviate the problems associated with staff shortages, thereby improving the patient experience and, potentially, the final outcome.
Please contact us to learn how IOT tools can help improve the experience for your patients and their families.
Having to visit a hospital can be stressful enough, without having to navigate your way through it feels like a labyrinth. Even new staff and visiting fellows can find it overwhelming.
Having signs wherever two corridors meet, combined with colour-coded directional arrows on the floor, works well, to a certain degree, in smaller hospitals.
In larger hospitals, or ones where departments are spread out across an entire campus, it takes technology to lead the way. Literally.
By using tools such as Aruba’s Meridian AppMaker, or Etelu, a Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX) partner, healthcare IT staff can create an app that reflects your facilities unique twists and turns. It can also be updated quickly every time you renovate.
Patients and other visitors would then download the app and Bluetooth beacons would guide the way. Turn by turn, corridor by corridor. No more getting lost and having to consult staff along the way. The app can also provide information on the various departments, the doctors who work there and how to contact them. This is reassuring for patients and their families, and a time-saver for staff.
What about patients who have not downloaded your app? Having interactive digital-map signs and kiosks can help.
Please contact us to learn more about incorporating a system based on your current technology. We’d be happy to show you the way.
- Securely connects any user to any application across any platform, all with a consistent user experience.
- Using your policies, dynamically steers traffic through optimal paths to get users quickly to needed applications.
- Supports third-party API integration.
- Deployment is simple, secure and centrally-managed.
- Can be hosted on prem or from the cloud.
- Single dashboard/pane of glass with end point flexibility.
- Improves Office 365 Performance.
- Save you money in the long run.
Please contact us, so we can help you make the right SD-Wan decision for your organisation.
~ Gartner
For years, the Wide Area Network (WAN) was the backbone for connecting people, applications and data across community/clinic/ hospital/ TEAMs. Today, new and evolving technologies – especially the increase of cloud-based applications and IOT – require systems to be more dynamic and agile. If you are relying on traditional network solutions, things will become increasingly challenging. The solution? SD-Wan (Software-Defined Wide Area Networking).
SD-Wan enables IT professionals to deploy new networks faster, manage any and all locations’ networks remotely from a single dashboard, while collecting network analytics and telemetry information. You can use it to configure the system and make decisions about which critical applications should be prioritized. You have complete visibility of applications, users and devices across your network, so you can make informed assessments. For instance, you can use it to help determine if you need more APs in some locations if things are lagging.
More importantly, in today’s high cyber-crime environment, SD-Wan provides much higher levels of security and protection for your network.
Further, clinical staff, patients and community members now expect a digital experience that equals, or rivals, what they have at home – and that begins with the network. This may be why Gartner estimates that “by 2020 [now!], more than 50% of WAN edge infrastructure refresh initiatives will be based on SD WAN versus traditional routers.”
What will you gain?
In short, greater flexibility and control of traffic shaping decisions, within individual clinics and departments, between multiple hospitals, as well as between your facilities and all the TEAMS members who depend on access. SD-Wan will give you better security, improved reliability and overall better quality of service.
As a bonus, it can also help save your organisation time and to reduce day-to-day operations costs.
Please contact us, so we can help you make the right SD-Wan decision for your organisation.
As network administrators know, wireless networks give you maximum flexibility so devices can connect from anywhere. Properly placed access points boost Wi-Fi signal so the device can be far from a router, completely untethered and still be connected to the network.
Depending on how you are configuring your clinic or a multi-hospital campus, you have two options: on-premise and cloud-managed. If you need a lot of customization, and are dealing with extensive security requirements, on-premise management might be the best option – though you may need a larger network engineering team to set things up.
Cloud-managed access points are easy to deploy and give you excellent visibility into network users, devices and their applications. In this case, we will usually recommend Meraki because it is the leader and cloud-controlled Wi-Fi, routing and security.
Meraki APs provide high-capacity wireless in dense, demanding environments. There are also outdoor access points built to withstand rain and dust. High performing wireless access points are optimized for heavy classroom use and district-wide deployments.
As the number of devices connecting to networks rises daily, and applications consume increasing amounts of bandwidth, delivering high quality, or reliable wireless has become mission-critical.
Meraki APs are built with enhanced CPU and memory capabilities to enable rich services, including Layer 7 application traffic shaping at the network edge. By intelligently an automatically adjusting based on user activities, network performance is optimized – and because Meraki networks leverage the power of distributed processing, you can add more capacity simply by deploying more devices, without worrying about controller bottlenecks or choke points.
Not only are Meraki enterprise-grade systems secure and scalable, they are very easy to install. Give us a call for recommendations on how to optimize high performing wireless access points for heavy clinic or hospital use and community-wide deployments.
Most endpoint security services and products claim to block 99% of malware. But what about the other 1%? The 1% that can wreak havoc on your network? And make it impossible for your clinicians, diagnosticians, nursing staff, administrators, patients and other stakeholders to connect – make it impossible for your clinic or hospital to function the way it should?
Blocking Bugs that Bypass Your First Line of Defence
- Stop advanced malware attacks automatically before they reach your endpoints with next-generation antivirus software.
- Our cloud-delivered endpoint protection solutions stop breaches and block malware, then rapidly detect, contain and remediate advanced threats that evade front-line defenses.
- Laptops, mobile devices, servers, virtual machines, containers and cloud infrastructure – all can be protected.
- Know everything about every endpoint: AMP gives you deeper visibility, context and control of servers and endpoints running Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS and Linux.
- Endpoints are continuously monitored and analysed, so you have all the data you need to investigate and respond to the riskiest of threats quickly and confidently.
- Sometimes a file can appear clean upon initial inspection. At the first sign of malicious behaviour, being able see the full history of the threat’s activity lets us catch, isolate with one click, contain, and remediate quickly and efficiently.
- Enforce Zero Trust by blocking risky endpoints from gaining access to application. The goal of “Zero Trust”: To eliminate trust in the system, because trust is what gets exploited.
- Security platform tools block, detect, investigate and respond to threats across your entire environment – not just your endpoints – so you have greater peace of mind.
- Leverage Cisco’s Talos unparalleled cyber security intelligence:
- With Advanced Malware Protection (AMP), you can thwart the most sophisticated of cyber threats– including the new ones being spawned, almost before they are conceived.
- Robust and dynamic Endpoint Protection Platform +Endpoint Detection and Response lets you investigate security incidents, rapidly contain and remediate endpoints.
- With a complete scope and history of the threats, and automated advanced investigative queries across any or all of your endpoints, you dramatically reduce investigation and remediation cycles.
In short: Endpoint security software protects your network by continuously scanning and running anti-malware and anti-virus protection on all your local devices. This means, of course, that your chosen software solution must function across all endpoint devices including tablets and other mobile devices.
Please contact us to see what solution is right your network and healthcare teams.
Ever delayed making an important security update or installing a new patch because you weren’t sure about the impact it would have on your operations? Well, you’re not alone. More than half of CIOs and CISOs have done this at least once – some to rue it later, as many breaches are tied to patching problems.
Even if you are doing everything in a timely manner, it is not unusual for IT professionals to find out that the critical update or patch they thought had been deployed, was not actually updated on all devices, leaving the network exposed, and the organisation at risk, as a result.
But patching is just one example of how a lack of visibility across endpoints – laptops, servers, virtual machines, containers, or cloud infrastructure – can prevent organisations from operating efficiently and averting intrusions and related disruptions or downtime.
No matter how strict your policies and protocols, or how compliant and vigilant your users, the scale of today’s networks, and the escalation of endpoint device use, introduces new complexity and risk for every organisation. Add in legacy systems and endpoint platforms and involution increases.
We can help you know everything about every endpoint: AMP gives you deeper visibility, context and control of servers and endpoints running Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS and Linux.
With Advanced Malware Protection (AMP), you can also worry less about that 1%. AMP is one of the solutions we offer because it works with all security technologies and leverages Cisco’s Talos unparalleled cyber security intelligence. This means that digital threats – including the most advanced and most recent ones emerging – are automatically identified and stopped before they reach your endpoints.
Not only is this a robust and dynamic Endpoint Protection Platform, but you also get Endpoint Detection and response which enables you to investigate security incidents and remediate endpoints quickly. You’ll know exactly what went wrong, where, when and why.
We also work with other manufacturers, so have a range of solutions to help protect your endpoints. Call us today, to find out how your endpoints can be protected, no matter what technology you currently have in place.
Tech advances continue to evolve. Mobile health and virtual diagnosing have been integrated as standard tools. More healthcare teams are involved in treating patients… all while seeking to improve the patient experience.
It’s a big challenge – especially for the IT teams responsible for ensuring everyone can connect easily from wherever, whenever they need to. For many departments, is too much for too few people.
Need to free up your IT staff to work on implementing new projects or handling the day-to-day demands of your clinic or hospital network? Looking to shift capital expenses to operating expenses? Or both? Either way, Managed Services can be a cost-effective way to enhance the efficiency and dependability of your IT operations.
We can remotely monitor your system 24/7, looking for anomalies that can impact your IT infrastructure’s dependability and the speed of your network connections, all the while checking for potential threats and vulnerabilities.
We’ll remediate the problem before it creates headaches for your team, making sure you know exactly what happened and when and how the problem was resolved. Or we can alert you as disturbances are detected, letting you know where to look, so your team can get to work immediately. The choice is yours.
Many clients also have us to take a more proactive approach, ensuring that networks, mobile devices and cloud services are up-to-date in terms of security patches, maintenance and more. Some simply need a little assistance as they migrate to the cloud, adopt new applications and implement mobile device management protocols.
Some clients also tell us that as new tools are added, more rules are needed – and that often there aren’t enough resources in place to work out all the policies that you need, or to communicate those changes to current staff and new people as they are on boarded. This is another area in which we can provide assistance.
Bottom line: You decide how much help you need, or want, and we’ll be there.
As healthcare comes to rely more heavily on connected devices and machines that talk to one another, new rules and ways of integrating applications with existing infrastructure are needed.
Today’s enterprise-level information security needs have evolved to the point where many of yesterday’s strategies are no longer relevant.
In many instances, hospital and other healthcare administrators don’t have the resources to keep up with all the changes, let alone work out all the new policies needed.
At Cloud Managed Networks, we stay on top of the ever-evolving security landscape and can help you put together employee protocols that make sense for the products and programs you have in place today.
We can also help you get your employees on board ways that make them want to follow your procedures. Really.
Explaining how would be like answering, “How once a piece of string?” It’s different for every company. Please contact us so we can help you figure out what is needed today – and to lay the foundation for tomorrow.
