Allina Health
As the state of Minnesota’s major healthcare provider, Allina Health operates a system made up of 11 hospitals, more than 75 clinics, 15 community pharmacies, 5,000 physicians, four ambulatory care centers and more than 23,000 employees.
In 2009, Allina implemented Excellian One Patient, One Record across all their facilities—one of America’s most comprehensive electronic medical record systems. One Patient, One Record makes important medical information about each patient easily accessible to front-line caregivers on an extensive fleet of laptop and tablet computers.
Challenges
In a demonstration of technology adoption, Allina is rapidly increasing the number of laptops and tablets they provide to nurses, physicians, and other mobile employees to allow for better patient care. However, with the move towards portable computers, Allina’s IT team experienced a sharp increase in laptop theft, including one incident requiring public disclosure of breached health information, Allina sought a high-tech solution for laptop management and data-breach protection.
Solution
Two months after the data breach, and a review of available products, Allina began implementing Absolute on all of its laptops. IT staff has dramatically reduced laptop theft, recovered stolen computers and improved laptop auditing accuracy from 30% to more than 95%. With Absolute as a complement to Allina’s Utimaco encryption system, the provider is confident that it is delivering the highest level of protection for its devices and the sensitive health information stored on them.
Absolute allows Allina to easily identify computers that have gone missing, enforce software policies and maintain a fleet of optimally running devices. Most importantly, they can remotely invoke preemptive or reactive security measures to safeguard each device and the data it contains.
Results
Absolute makes managing laptops much safer and easier. We know immediately if a laptop begins to drift off our radar we can send the department manager a message asking them to investigate. If a device is lost or stolen, Absolute is a lifeline.
Resources
Absolute Persistence Technology
Learn more about Persistence — the only technology that keeps you in complete command with a self-healing, two-way connection to any endpoint or application — even if they are off the network. It’s a fundamentally new approach to security, leveraging our privileged position embedded in the firmware of billions of endpoints.
The Cost of a Data Breach in Healthcare
Healthcare IT is tasked with meeting compliance challenges in an intricate and transformational regulatory environment. With a new data protection regulations to keep up with and increasingly high settlement fees for data breaches, strengthening the IT infrastructure is not optional – it is a must. Download this whitepaper to learn how to avoid a costly data breach and embrace the digital healthcare revolution.
