The risk to IT from Healthcare

[packets]

Food for thought!
I find it amazing, the healthcare industry's full speed approach to IT when we're witnessing so much risk and failure. Everyone seems to be saying let’s just rush this idea and get there, and then we’ll fix and deal with the consequences later. Has there ever been a time when a whole industry moved with such excitement and disregard for the security?
There must be such a huge amount of power to be had, contained with our health records, that risk doesn’t really matter? The experience of IT thus far screams SLOWDOWN, but momentum has completely removed any ability for control…this train will not be easily slowed regardless of the danger(s) ahead!
I guess all we can do is hang on and hope it ends well…

[packets]

No, I don't think the marriage of IT and healthcare just happened. What is new is this huge (recent) shove by the state toward digital healthcare (EMR’s) without clear solution(s) available from the computer industry to successfully achieve, across the board, what will be required. With that said, I don’t see how anyone could have predicted the cost of such a hurried move! In the end, its cost will include much more than just dollars.
You know, they say in order to heal what ails us; we sometimes must endure excruciating pain…Guess this is true for dental as well.

[murmsk]

F1 , Do you mind me asking... Who are you?

steve

[wjstarck]

http://www.f1assistance.com/

But he's just spamming this (and many other) forum(s) to boost his search engine rankings.

[packets]

Really??? This isn't about me, all should be asking if what I’m suggesting is true or not, and if so, what you can do to move beyond it? The only thing worse than doing nothing, is doing nothing…
I fully support the Open Source community and truly appreciate Open Dental (OD) and their very successful efforts to provide a quality software, service, and support. Fortunately, OD has a place (discussion forum) where you can discuss, question, and resolve issues.
I've worked dental IT (installation, service, and support) for several years and in many tens of dental offices (with different software/hardware vendors and all sorts of digital imaging equipment), but witness a frightening lack of understanding about the current internet threat and/or risks to your supposedly protected content.
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil…is that it? I say; a firewall and antivirus does not a secure domain make! Now, what choices do you have to manage risk, mitigate attacks, avoid non-compliance, and lesson costly down-time?
Obviously I don’t have all the answers only a few suggestions, but if the difficult discussion doesn’t start here, then where? This is your forum...

[jordansparks]

I'm going to classify his posts as non-spam for now based on the following:
1. Other than this thread, everything has been largely on topic.
2. This thread is in advanced topics and is not grossly off topic.
but most importantly,
3. Since he's not posting any links with his messages, it's not boosting his search engine rankings. I'm skeptical that the the domain name without the .com is going to help him.

[jordansparks]

3. His username has been changed at his request to avoid any suggestion of impropriety. Definitely not spam.

[wjstarck]

My bad. Apologies, Carl.

[packets]

My bad. Apologies, Carl.

no problem, Accepted!
I'm now just a local shop trying to help small business fight the battle malcontents have wage against us all. I’m told the biggest threat comes from those tubes and that dang interweb thingy. They said there are some real mischief-makers out there and they mean to do us harm…
Like Open Dental, there are many proven open source "free" security solutions available to help SMB's achieve their IT goals, just not many telling us about them.
Never completely trust anyone who suggests they have the silver bullet for all your IT security concerns, especially anything that may come out of my pie hole. Verify any/all proposed solutions offered by anyone, and make an informed decision. And for business sake, don’t be afraid to change your opinion with more information. This landscape is changing rapidly and most are leading from behind…Wha?

[packets]

Dental’s challenge like others in the healthcare industry is an inability to truly acknowledge threats and manage risk! On a happier note, it can be fixed, more capital please…