IT Support for Healthcare Businesses
Healthcare services are not limited to those funded by the provincial government and corresponding municipalities. In fact, healthcare is big business, and we’re not just talking about private healthcare in the traditional sense. Businesses included may provide medical record management, childbirth services, dietary and nutritional support, medical supply sales, and alternative healthcare to name a few. The industry is growing faster than most, and is more likely to require IT support than many of its counterparts. Here’s why.
Top Three Reasons Why Healthcare Businesses Need to Secure Outside IT Support Right Away
1. Cybercriminals Are Lying to You
Strange heading, right? But it’s true. In case you missed the news a few months ago when COVID 19 hit North America, hacking groups went public and promised to leave healthcare organizations alone during this trying moment in time. Apparently not everyone in the cybercrime world got the memo because as of May (2020) the FBI and DHS reported that hacking groups from China were targeting and compromising U.S. health organizations that were conducting COVID-19-related research. Then, in June (2020) hackers started targeting hospitals (via Life Healthcare Group) overseas.
Cybercriminals know no bounds. While they may (or may not) leave provincially and federally funded healthcare services in Canada alone, they will not look as “kindly” open private and alternative health product/service providers. In fact, given the sensitive nature of the data that your business holds, you are a top target for ransomeware attacks. You are also the primary focus of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, who updated the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) over a year ago to account for the elevated risk to consumer data.
You require a comprehensive and unbiased audit of your entire IT infrastructure to check for all vulnerabilities.
2. Healthcare Cannot Afford “Downtime”
In our recent article about IT support for financial services, we stated:
“Next to health and medical services, no other industry can afford to go “offline” or lose access to data and operations for more than a few minutes quite like yours.”
It’s true. And if the COVID 19 lockdowns taught us anything it’s that public health is deemed far more important than economic interests. The health and wellness of people across the province and country (as applicable) depend upon access to your products and services. If downtime or some other form of IT system compromise or malfunction gets in the way you may lose them as patients, clients, or customers to competing providers. You have inherited a responsibility to ensure that your operations (and therefore IT infrastructure) are up and running 99.99% of the time. You need to secure outside IT support services that offer data backup and disaster recovery services in addition to around the clock emergency IT support.
3. Digital Transformation is a Necessity and Competitive Advantage in Private Healthcare
Adoption of cloud-based services and sweeping digital transformation is a major competitive advantage for businesses across all industries. However, the healthcare industry in comparison has been slower in this adoption than many others. The silver lining of the current health and economic turmoil is that it has forced organizations into digital transformation, your field of business included. The benefits (as applicable) are numerous, and include, but are not exclusive to the following:
- Enhanced ability to remotely monitor the health of patients and clients
- Enhanced ability to remotely provide health services and guidance (i.e. physiotherapy, etc.) to patients and clients
- Provides patients, clients, and customers with new tools to manage their own accounts and profiles (i.e. via a smartphone application or other online portal)
- Improved logistics to ensure more efficient health product shipping processes
- Improved healthcare staff collaboration and productivity, from anywhere at anytime
- Permits the leveraging of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to provide predictive modeling and deliver better services to patients, clients, and customers
- Provides for more logical and secure data storage and retrieval
- Provides better budget management
Ready to learn more about how outside IT support can greatly improve operations for your healthcare business? Contact SAV Technology today.