Healthcare organizations have as much to gain from the use of SaaS applications and cloud services as any other industry. Unfortunately, given the nature of healthcare data and its inherently high value to hackers, they incur much greater risk from data loss.
Physicians and healthcare providers use collaboration services such as Microsoft Office 365, Gmail, and Evernote, as well as simple file sharing services like Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive to instantly share electronic health records (EHRs), radiology images, and test results with colleagues to get a second opinion or more quickly work out the details of a patient treatment plan. In the process, sharing protected health information (PHI) can reduce the need for duplicate medical testing by each consulting specialist.
Additionally, physicians checking on hospitalized patients can access and update their patients’ EHRs onsite from any Web-enabled device, from any location – including a home office. Such record sharing helps healthcare organizations lower costs and deliver better and faster patient care.