How to effectively leverage BYOD to support Meaningful Use and SSO interview/podcast with Tom Murphy, Chief Marketing Officer at Bradford Networks
In part 2, Tom discusses the following:
- Steps for healthcare organizations to make BYOD a priority
- How to leverage BYOD to support Meaningful Use
- Single Sign On Technology in BYOD
- Future of BYOD
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HIT Consultant: Now with healthcare organizations facing competing priorities of Meaningful Use and ICD-10, what steps must healthcare organizations make to ensure that BYOD is also considered a priority?
Tom Murphy: From what we’ve seen is doctors are helping push the adoption of BYOD again because of a lot of the things we just mentioned. So, BYOD, is something that, in many industries, especially in healthcare, with the userability of those devices, and specific use cases in power, what we’re seeing is doctors are driving that. Doctors, in many ways, are saying to organizations “I will use this device and you will figure out how to make sure that it is safe and it’s not going to jeopardize electronic medical records. So, the priority starts there because of the use case and because of the doctor’s passion for the devices. What usually slows down the adoption in a way, is the back end, which is how do we control the risks, how do we maintain security of our information and what we see is that we have steps to help people adopt mobile devices, adopt iPads in their organizations. And those steps, as we’ve discussed, become really a best practice, so minimizing risks. And it really comes down to, if you’ve got sensitive information, how can you ensure the integrity of the devices that are connecting, the people that are going to connect, and provision of the right level of access. Because, remember, there’s two fundamental things we don’t want to happen. One, is we don’t want data leaving the organization and two, we don’t want to have unauthorized access to data because that obviously would be, in both cases, could result in a breach.
HIT Consultant: Well I think you kind of touched on this already…how can we effectively leverage BYOD to support specifically Meaningful Use?
Tom Murphy: Meaningful Use it really comes back to, the use cases that I love to talk about, is one have you ever sat in a room or talked to a doctor and there’s something very complicated they‘re trying to explain, a lot of times they’ll look at a chart, they’ll look at, maybe a skeleton that they use in doctor’s offices, or so those visuals really help explain concepts that otherwise would be very difficult to comprehend. So, the visual power of an iPad for an example, is a tool. It’s a communication tool. The second thing is, is the timed information. The time to gather or have critical information at your fingertips. The use case of having access to information, right in the emergency room or right at the doctor’s hand. And switching patients dynamically as you walk from one room to another. Yes, it’s capable with a laptop, but it’s clumsy with a laptop. So, think about carrying an iPad and how powerful it is to have that information on the iPad. And the third is, again, is the cleanliness of that device. I mean, again it sounds so simple, but it’s easy to spray down and clean and wipe an iPad, allows it to be, go from room to room and to be used from patient to patient. So when you put all those together, ultimately you have that communication tool, you get the time of information, relevance of getting information quickly, productivity, and then lastly you’ve got the ability for it to be a viable tool because it can be cleaned very quickly.[pullquote] ultimately you have that communication tool, you get the time of information, relevance of getting information quickly, productivity, and then lastly you’ve got the ability for it to be a viable tool because it can be cleaned very quickly.[/pullquote]
HIT Consultant: Where do you see a single-sign on technology playing an active role in BYOD?
Tom Murphy: Single sign on technology is not new to healthcare, it’s been around for many, many years. Ultimately what we see with BYOD, we want to know who owns the device. When a device enters a organization, there’s a lot of stations within healthcare today and those stations are typically shared by different people. With BYOD, my take is that it’s a person’s device, it’s an individual’s device and the sharing of that device, if it’s truly a BYOD-environment where it’s a personal device, I don’t expect the same level of sharing to take place. Now, let’s not confuse that with a corporate issued device that may be shared. As an example, you might have an iPad that is something that may reside at a health care facility when someone comes in and registers for healthcare. Or it’s a waiting room. Or there’s different use cases where single sign on might be appropriate based on use of the device, but for the most part with BYOD I expect it to be more single-use, single person than I do with shared devices across many different users.[pullquote] BYOD I expect it to be more single-use, single person than I do with shared devices across many different users.[/pullquote]
HIT Consultant: Now, where do you see BYOD in 2-5 years in healthcare? Right now, it seems to be very controversial and a lot of health care organizations are really unprepared and really don’t know how to take on this issue. Where do you see it progressing 2-5 years from now?
Tom Murphy: So what I think some of the biggest challenges that health care are facing are, they’re facing, they have the ability right now to capture and embrace electronic medical records and take advantage of the some of this stimulus money that’s been put in place. What’s also happening at the same time is that they’ve got some deadlines of 2014 of getting those medical records online. So, you kind of have this window of opportunity of that they’re really focused on getting their records in place. At the same time, what’s going to happen is, now that their records are in place, accessibility to those records is going to be a fall on wave. Accessibility is going to come in the form of the existing stations and existing tools that they use, but the portability, like any other industry, getting access to that information is going to change. So, we see it today with again, iPads are kind of the first waves coming through, the doctors wanting that communication vehicle or accessed information. But the use of portable, mobile devices whether they’re corporate issued or personal devices owned by personnel. Access to that information is just going to logical follow. So, over the next 2-5 years, what I would expect is we’ll see early adopters, mobile devices and personal devices getting access to information and we’ll see that spearheaded by the people that have power, like doctors[pullquote]over the next 2-5 years, what I would expect is we’ll see early adopters, mobile devices and personal devices getting access to information and we’ll see that spearheaded by the people that have power, like doctors[/pullquote], but over more and more what we’ll end up seeing is as the security and policies get better, as more and more electronic medical records get online, just like any technology, there’s a first wave of early adopters, we will see that come down into the mainstream, into other people into the organization that will adopt the same types of technologies, particular use cases, that don’t have the same kind of compelling, really high level compelling event, like communication or like, the time to save someone’s life, but it might just be more administrative use or more general communication about what’s going on and that’s going to filter its way back into the mainstream of the organization in the next 3-5 years.
HIT Consultant: Thank you! Any closing comments/thoughts?
Tom Murphy: Yes! Ultimately, when we look at BYOD, I like to say is that many organizations, as example, educational institutions who are doing BYOD and they’ve been doing it for many years. BYOD is not new, it’s just that what we see in different industries, there are talking BYOD based on, the useability and opportunity that presents itself. What we see in healthcare is we see, again, a communication device, what we see is the ability to time the information and kind of the cleanabiltiy of the device. That’s what’s driving the use in healthcare. When you have doctors saying they’re going to use the device, that’s a powerful statement. In order to have safe use of that device, it has to be provisioned properly in an organization. What Bradford is going to do is protect the device, protect the user, protect the access point, and provision safe access to electronic medical records and allow people to onboard their personal devices in a safe way by knowing that information and provisioning the right level of access.
About Tom Murphy:
As Chief Marketing Officer, Tom is responsible for the global strategy and execution of Bradford’s marketing efforts. In this role, Tom is focused on extending Bradford’s presence and relevance on the world stage, building and guiding Bradford’s global brand, to further the success of the company’s sales teams and partner ecosystem.
A 25-year veteran of the IT industry, Tom joined Bradford after five years as the chief strategy officer of Bit9, Inc., a security company that specializes in endpoint protection and application whitelisting. During his time at Bit9, Tom was awarded the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council’s CXO of the Year award, expanded its global customer base from zero to hundreds of enterprise customers, evangelized around the world, and positioned Bit9 as the market leader in application whitelisting. Prior to Bit9, Tom held leadership positions at several highly successful software companies including Symantec/Relicore, BMC Software/BGS Systems and Precise Software Solutions/Veritas Software. While at Precise, Tom established leadership in the Application Performance Management (APM) market culminating with a highly successful IPO.
