What You Should Know:
– Recent KLAS research reveals that Imprivata—whose single sign-on solution has a large healthcare footprint—is currently the only vendor to offer a broad digital identity platform.
– Building on that research, a new report explores the potential benefits and challenges of deeply adopting Imprivata’s offerings. Insights come from in-depth interviews with 6 organizations identified by Imprivata as “deep adopters” as well as from 15 organizations within the vendor’s broader customer base
Developing HIT Solutions to Meet the Growing Need For Holistic Digital Identities
Each year, KLAS interviews thousands of healthcare professionals about the IT solutions and services their organizations use. In its latest report, interviews were conducted over the last 12 months using KLAS’ standard quantitative evaluation for healthcare software, which is composed of 16 numeric ratings questions and 4 yes/no questions, all weighted equally. Combined, the ratings for these questions make up the overall performance score, which is measured on a 100-point scale. The questions were organized into six customer experience pillars—culture, loyalty, operations, product, relationship, and value.
The main findings from the report are as follows:
1. A bright future awaits Deep Adopters despite current challenges: The Imprivata digital identity platform is used deeply by a small portion of the vendor’s very large healthcare customer base. These customers have adopted multiple digital identity products from Imprivata and can offer insight into the platform’s readiness for the customer base at large. Despite real product challenges (specifically on the compliance side), the deep adopters interviewed by KLAS generally give Imprivata’s digital identity platform a thumbs-up due to their high confidence in Imprivata based on strong executive-level relationships. They do note a few opportunities for Imprivata to improve their implementation process and make resources available to help set customers up for success—one deep adopter had difficulty setting up the identity governance solution and wanted more help scaling the product; another has felt a lack of connection with Imprivata following the implementation and has not yet seen an ROI. A few deep adopters report that while they are optimistic about Imprivata’s innovation, they sometimes take a wait-and-see approach with new developments to ensure the technology is on par with other offerings in the market.
2. Impacts on clinician efficiency and security: In healthcare, a digital identity platform needs to serve clinicians while also facilitating greater security. Both deep and general adopters of Imprivata report a strong, positive impact on clinicians—users find the SSO to be a lifesaver, facilitating instant logins to critical applications and reducing wasted time. Feedback on Imprivata’s security impact is mixed. Customers that report increased security note better authentication practices, locked workstations, and reduced instances of passwords being visibly posted on computers. Other organizations struggle to find the right balance in maintaining security best practices without frustrating clinicians with things like frequent system time-outs. These customers actively look for more guidance from Imprivata on how to best leverage the tools to secure their environments.
3. More time is needed for seamless intrasuite product integration: Across healthcare, strong intrasuite product integration often lags when vendors rapidly expand through acquisition. Deep adopters of the Imprivata platform report varied experiences with integration between the vendor’s various products and modules. One deep adopter scored Imprivata a 9 (out of 9) for integration (both internal and external), describing integration as a strong point for the vendor. Conversely, a less-satisfied customer specifically highlighted identity governance as an area in which integration is lacking. However, based on Imprivata’s track record, deep adopters who report integration challenges are optimistic that improvements will come. General adopters are much less likely to be satisfied with Imprivata’s integration with external solutions, and some note that other IAM vendors they use don’t have as many integration challenges. In particular, general adopters using Imprivata’s drug diversion and patient privacy monitoring solutions are more likely to report integration challenges.
4. Customer relationships continue to flourish: Imprivata’s track record of customer success has been a key driver for the early deep adopters of the vendor’s digital identity platform. All respondents who shared their organization’s motivations for going deep with Imprivata cite prior experience with the vendor as a decision factor, and nearly all report a high level of partnership as the biggest benefit. Deep adopters receive a high level of involvement from Imprivata’s executive leadership team and report benefits from the technology in the form of convenience for their clinicians and automation of historically manual processes.
5. Customers not adopting Imprivata still value niche solutions: Nearly two-thirds of interviewed general adopters have considered using Imprivata’s digital identity platform more deeply, though few report near-term plans to make that jump. Reported barriers include cost concerns or lack of funding, the ability to achieve better integration with non-Imprivata products, and other IT priorities. Those not considering deeper adoption of Imprivata are invested in other products and not looking to switch or aren’t aware of Imprivata’s broader offerings. Use of multiple vendors is the norm in the IAM market, and vendors commonly used to augment Imprivata’s offering include Microsoft and Duo for MFA, SailPoint and Micro Focus for IDG, and VMware for mobile device management. Nearly all respondents who use a third-party product say they are unlikely to switch to Imprivata or are unsure of their future plans.
“A good thing about Imprivata is that their roots are in healthcare. They have obviously moved more to the security side, but they have always been there to help providers and enable what providers do. Partnering with Imprivata was a win for us. Our providers have a level of trust in Imprivata that other companies on the security side may not have. We looked at a bunch of nonclinical cybersecurity companies, but those companies did too much. We needed an identity governance system so that we could interface it with our ERP system and put in logins based on titles. Other companies wanted to sell us a complete suite of products, but Imprivata just sold us what we needed. That worked out well for us.” —CIO
