Hospital option: Private, high-speed data
Hospital option: Private, high-speed data
Secure toll road provides alternative to Internet
Requirements of the Health Insurance Portabil-ity and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 have left many health care facilities scrambling to find secure ways to transmit medical data. Internet access is fast and almost universal, but the public connection can leave information vulnerable.
Now the American Hospital Association (AHA) in Chicago offers an alternative: access to a private, reliable, high-speed data communication network. The AHA says it hopes the network will help improve patient care while enhancing operations.
"We want to be in a position to offer health care organizations the resources that allow them to succeed in today’s digital environment," says Dick Davidson, AHA president. "The first step is to build the secure network that will allow that to happen."
Using this network, hospitals and their affiliated organizations will be able to securely exchange large digital images (such as MRIs, CTs, and X-rays), transfer electronic medical records, conduct video conferences and consultations, and manage administrative data such as billing, claims, payroll, and accounts receivable. The private nature of this network also will help hospitals begin to address HIPAA’s security requirements, the AHA says.
The AHA is offering the private network access through Darwin Networks in Louisville, KY. Darwin provides high-speed Internet access and private, wide-area network (WAN) solutions, using various wireless and wireline technologies. Darwin signed a peer-to-peer marketing partnership with the AHA, says Russ Maney, senior vice president of marketing for Darwin.
"The AHA was searching for some way of enabling hospitals and other health care providers to take advantage of the connectivity that an Internet connection provides," Maney explain. "At the same time, the AHA wanted to comply with HIPAA requirements or at least put itself into a position to comply with the final requirements and give hospitals the confidence that they can securely send information to other peer hospitals, insurance companies or government entities — whomever it might be."
The AHA is looking at opportunities to provide content over the private connection to its members, too, he adds.
A private toll road
Darwin runs and manages its own end-to-end, private TCP/IP backbone nationwide, Maney says. Although peered at key points by the public Internet, the network is closed to outsiders.
"As an analogy, we are providing a private toll road as opposed to the public highway of the Internet," he explains. "The packets of information with the TCP/IP technology are cars on the toll road."
Encrypting the information adds another level of security, he says. "Encrypting the information is like locking the doors of the cars on the toll road. But since we are only allowing our own traffic on there, the crooks can’t get on the highway."
Many of Darwin’s customers prefer to have their business-to-business traffic flow over the private network as opposed to trying to encrypt and send it out over the public Internet, where it is handled by any number of public Internet providers, Maney says.
This security appealed to the AHA because of the HIPAA requirements, he says. "There has been a lot of discussion about what level of encryption do you need to put sensitive medical data over the public Internet. Should you even be able to do that at all? By connecting to the public Internet, you might be creating a security risk."
Specifics of the technology
If a health care provider is in one of Darwin’s core markets, such as Atlanta, the company typically uses a point-to-point wireless type of network solution.
"We place our wireless transmitters on select towers or other tall buildings," Maney says. "As long as you can see the hospital from one of those towers, we can use a high-speed, wireless data connection to reach that hospital. Therefore, we don’t have to go through the phone company and its copper wires or any other fiber [optic] provider and its wires. We have our own private, wireless link to that hospital."
One hospital in Dayton, OH, has built a private, local-area network by having antennas on each of its facilities. "They can trade information between buildings that way," Maney says.
"Wireless technology in particular enables us to have a private last mile," he adds. "In technology, the question of How do you get to my doorstep?’ makes a big difference."
Companies that use a public phone company or a public fiber-optic provider likely won’t be running their own private backbone, he says. "They’re probably hooking into the public Internet like everybody else would if they
had a dial-up connection."
If the provider is not within sight of one of Darwin’s towers, Darwin can give the provider a dedicated, private T1 connection that is hooked up to Darwin’s network.
"This means we can physically reach anywhere in the continental United States," he says. "If we can’t get a wire line, T1 type of connection, or if we can’t get a fixed wireless connection, then we will go to a satellite [connection]."
If a provider is transmitting over one of Darwin’s wireless connections, the medical data are automatically encrypted by the technology. Further, because Darwin controls the network, data, information, and communication streams can be tagged to give them additional priority and specific routing instructions.
Darwin’s control makes the use of the private network more affordable to providers and allows them to keep pace with the national gravitation toward a secure, reliable broadband environment, the AHA says.
"The network will allow health care organizations to cost-effectively run mission-critical business and clinical applications, as well as build a foundation on which new and innovative technology applications can be deployed," says Tony Burke, president and CEO of AHA Financial Solutions, an AHA subsidiary involved in the association’s search for a network connectivity partner.
(Editor’s note: For more information, visit the AHA’s Web site at www.aha.org or Darwin Network’s site at www.darwin.net.)
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