Internet-Healthcare: Ultimate Savior of the System? - Technology Information

Health Management Technology, Dec, 1999 by Kathryn McTighe

Internet business solutions build on integrated voice-video-data networks.

Unlike other vertical markets affected by e-commerce, healthcare initially resisted the changes spawned by Internet technology. But today's Internet-powered applications are shaping the flow of information to Websites and how consumers, organizations, and businesses interact in healthcare.

Use of such tools as the Internet, intranets, extranets, virtual private networks (VPNs), electronic data interchange (EDI), video modules, electronic medical records (EMRs), and picture archive communication systems (PACs) has proliferated. The information shift created by these technologies ultimately will touch practically every facet of the healthcare business. By the start of the new year/new millennium, the number of Americans using the Internet is expected to be at 33.5 million persons,

Over the next five to ten years, I-healthcare will evolve from compartmentalized access to a fully integrated system where all pertinent data will be housed in one repository for authorized user access on the Internet platform. This shift is expected to affect both product offerings and service quality.

Market Expectations

The products involved will include voice, video, and data integration, and service quality will reflect data and user authentication protocols.

Protecting valuable data and network resources from corruption and intrusion is of paramount importance to consumers, doctors, and organizations in today's healthcare environment. Current and pending regulations governed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 will impact the transmission of certain health information and assurances regarding the confidentiality of patient data.

Several factors are driving industry concern about network security:

* Growing reliance on information technology in lieu of paper-based records;

* Large regional providers that routinely share clinical and business data among multiple entities and frequently from multiple sites;

* Remote access to patient information by physicians;

* Consumer-driven healthcare.

Security Approaches

Comprehensive security risk assessments will identify areas of security vulnerability, and sophisticated security products and services can limit susceptibility to both outside hackers and internal attacks. A multi-faceted approach to network security may include a combination of firewalls, encryption, and authentication protocols. Customers need to be confident that sensitive clinical and financial data is secure.

Voice, video, and integrated data will launch enterprise multi-service networking into the next millennium with significant impact across many vertical market segments, healthcare included. One of the early stumbling blocks to this technology, particularly in healthcare, was the preponderance of legacy systems. But with innovative Internet applications, a healthcare entity can integrate and mine data from many legacy systems, with the need for these legacy systems diminishing over time.

The challenge for the enterprise is to optimize networking to carry voice, video, and data traffic efficiently, departing from the use of disparate facilities for each application transport. With Internet Protocol (IP) as the universal transport of the future, the enterprise will reap significant statistical gains in bandwidth efficiency, reduced overall bandwidth requirements, ease of management, and the ability to rapidly deploy new applications.

Flexibility is Key

A successful business model for voice, video, and integrated data fosters incremental deployment and enables a healthcare organization to take advantage of new IP-based applications at its own pace while preserving heterogeneous legacy investments and leveraging existing IP data infrastructures. Flexibility is a key asset in this fast-evolving environment. At the same time, Internet technology is forcing healthcare entities--doctors, hospitals, labs, clinics, MCOs, payers--to reevaluate how they process clinical and business data.

While recognizing that consumers are expecting more and more access, some healthcare entities are reluctant to embrace a total move to IP telephony. Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI), the largest Catholic healthcare system in the United States, has assumed a measured approach in its adoption of new technology to address telephony issues.

"Although voice, video, and data integration yields a distinctive competitive advantage in today's healthcare business market, pacing the implementation of IP telephony is critical," states John Robinson, director of network engineering for CHI. "In healthcare, telephony can be a life or death technology. You must establish a comfort level for all users as you initiate enhancements. Resiliency, redundancy, and scalability are key factors to the acceptance of this evolutionary technology in a healthcare environment."

A national healthcare organization that represents the ministries of 12 congregations of religious women, Catholic Health Initiatives spans 22 states and operates 70 hospitals and 49 long-term care facilities, assisted living facilities, and residential units in 72 rural and urban communities. CHI represents more than 75,000 employees and combined annual revenues of $5 billion.