Network Infrastructure

Critical technologies -- including the electronic health record platform -- at a health network in Missouri went black this past week, and stayed down for 20 hours.

Fair or not, Cerner's reputation in recent years has been one of increasing embrace of openness -- at least more open than Epic, with its perceived "garden-walled" ethos. That stated commitment to data liquidity probably served it well with DoD decision-makers.

Many organizations do a decent job of limiting access to data and systems for their general user population. When it comes to privileged access, however, most simply attempt to limit who has this type of access without considering some inherent risks.

Connected health infrastructure is emerging in healthcare as a binding agent for diverse devices and workflows, aiding diagnosis, monitoring and prevention, according to new analysis from Frost & Sullivan. But many providers don't even have a plan for connectivity.

A two-hospital health system in Indiana is notifying its patients that their protected health information and Social Security numbers have been compromised following a phishing attack. What's more, cyberattackers were able to swipe data unchecked for more than a year.

It took a health insurance company almost a year to notify some 1.1 million of its members that their personal data had been swiped by hackers. What's more, the cyberattack wasn't even detected in-house.

Surescripts processed some 6.5 billion electronic health data transactions across its network in 2014 -- more over the course of the year than either American Express (6 billion) or PayPal (4.2 billion), officials say.

Two big-name California health systems have officially signed on with the San Diego Health Connect health information exchange, a deal poised to put an additional 2.7 million patients on the network.

Prior to the deployment of its virtual desktop infrastructure, clinicians at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles had been logging into desktops using shared user IDs -- a risky shortcut to bypass having to type multiple passwords.

Massachusetts state officials knew its $1 billion insurance website -- set up under the Affordable Care Act and part of the nationwide push to offer health insurance to the uninsured -- was in trouble. Worse, they said nothing.