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WILLIAMSPORT, PA – Susquehanna Healthcare, an affiliation of three hospitals in rural north-central Pennsylvania, was ahead of its time in 2002 when its IT department figured it would be cool to pilot 300 biometric computer mice – 50 for the IT team and the rest for the doctors.
Fast forward to 2011, and Susquehanna Health is still ahead of most other healthcare organizations, with 1,000 biometric mice used by 3,000 clinicians and administrative personnel.
They can’t imagine their work without those mice, said Tim Schoener, administrative director of IT Services at Susquehanna Health. They’ve saved aggravation sparked by forgotten passwords. They’ve saved the help desk countless hours – and money – that would have been spent helping clinicians and other personnel change their passwords, and they have proven to be more secure than other types of identity authentication.
“I would say we have tighter security because now I don’t have a doctor that’s writing down a password on a piece of paper, sticking it in their pocket,” said Schoener. “I’m telling you that’s what they would do, especially a guy that sees 10 admissions a week.”
Schoener has also seen passwords on sticky notes posted to the computer frame. He admits that he uses the same password for everything, unless the system makes him change it. “Then I have to write them down,” he said.
He acknowledges that security professionals would advise against writing down passwords.
“They’re going to say, ‘No don’t do that,’” Schoener said. “I don’t know how they expect me to remember it.”
Susquehana Health uses Siemens Soarian technology. The health system served as the initial beta site for Soarian financials in 2004 and was one of the first to use Soarian clinicals, said Schoener.
The biometric mice are just the ticket for systems that require complicated passwords, officials say.
“One of the things doctors are always frustrated with” is how to remember passwords, Schoener said. “And let’s face it, a lot of docs are not good typists. Even to type in a password that long was frustrating to them.”
Xyntek is a Philadelphia-based technology company that focuses on IT, automation and compliance. Among its offerings is the Biometrics XyNexus Healthcare Integration Service. Xyntek helped Susquehanna integrate the biometric mice (developed by Siemens) with the Siemens Soarian Systems.
Tom Patrick, Xyntek’s vice president of sales, said Susquehanna is ahead of many hospitals in its use of biometrics authentication.
“We haven’t run into a single hospital that doesn’t have interest,” he said. At the same time, “we have not run into any of them that really have it, either.” Various entities have moved onto SSO (single sign-on) platforms, making the whole password situation easier, he said, but few are using biometrics.
“We’re finding a great appeal across the board – a great interest for either connecting the software to an SSO or for hospitals to embark on this whole biometrics and SSO combined product,” he said.
The biometric mice technology measures points on fingerprints, Schoener said.
“It’s really taking X-Y coordinates from the minutia points on my fingerprint and putting those in a database,” he said. “It’s not putting my fingerprint in a database, it’s putting X-Y coordinates – 5.45321, 6.74326.
