By Emanuel Pirker, founder and CEO, Stratodesk
A unique set of challenges influence
healthcare IT - from the increasing mobility of healthcare workers to the
protection of and access to sensitive patient information.
While healthcare providers continually move
around the hospital, they need immediate, secure access to apps and data.
However, strict laws, policies, and procedures
govern the storage and accessibility of confidential patient data. Likewise,
enabling secure identity authentication when prescribing and dispensing
medicine makes issues more complex.
To combat the rising demands placed on IT, IT
leaders are leveraging a powerful combination of end-user computing (EUC) and
virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) can help solve the challenges inherent to
this shift in healthcare. At the same time innovative IT solutions can save
money for healthcare IT and improve patient experience.
VDI - the Prescription for
Ailing Healthcare IT
VDI proves to be a tried-and-true solution for
the new and emerging challenges posed by an increasingly mobile healthcare work
world. VDI is how healthcare IT staff can more efficiently manage the vast
array of endpoints that make up the healthcare IT web. There are four areas of
focus for healthcare IT - ensuring compliance, repurposing outdated hardware
(endpoints), easing application updates and matching licensing requirements,
all through a centralized management approach.
- VDI, healthcare and compliance: many
regulations govern how patient data can be stored and accessed throughout and
without the hospital. VDI can help make coming into compliance that much easier
thanks to its unique, added security layer.
- Get rid of the management nightmare: IT
leaders use VDI to manage their endpoint deployments more easily. Endpoint
devices access virtual desktops that can be configured within the data center
or cloud.
- Repurposing endpoints: Because the endpoints
themselves are not doing the heavy lifting, IT can leverage existing devices,
old and new.
- Easing licensing requirements: VDI makes it
easier for IT to make sure all software licenses are up to date and in
compliance with both internal and external policies.
The Pandemic - A Lens into
the Promise of VDI for Healthcare IT
Now more than ever, PC conversion is a vitally
important aspect of endpoint strategy. The pandemic disrupted supply chains, which drove up prices
for already expensive new devices. PC Conversion was once a nice way for
healthcare providers to reduce capital investments in new hardware. Today it is
essential to budget preservation and ensuring high levels of employee
productivity across the entire organization.
PC Conversion effectively turns outdated
devices into healthy and technologically sound endpoints.
Productivity Extends Beyond
the Office
Take the case of the near-overnight explosion
of COVID-19 clinics and test sites and the herculean task asked of healthcare
IT to enable seamless and secure access to endpoints at these remote testing sites.
This seemingly insurmountable obstacle of
providing the right device, at the right place, for the right worker was made
possible because of the cloud, VDI, and PC Conversion.
The Future of VDI in Healthcare
Settings
We expect the demand for hybrid work scenarios
like these listed above to continue to drive the demand and need for
effective VDI and EUC deployments. Endpoint deployments in healthcare will
continue to become more diverse, both in regard to the actual device form
factors being leveraged, and to the location of those endpoints, and the
mixture of various third-party integrations within a secure endpoint strategy.
Raspberry Pis, Intel NUCs, personal devices,
and even underperforming, cheap laptops that now must be converted in order to
deliver seamless video collaboration in telehealth and power advanced software
are all being leveraged to power modern, mobile patient care.
While healthcare IT has never been so complex,
it has likewise never had so much incredible potential to succeed thanks to the
powerful combination of modern VDI, cloud, and end-user computing solutions
becoming more accessible than ever before.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emanuel Pirker, founder and CEO, Stratodesk: A Silicon Valley veteran,
Pirker has over 20 years of technology and entrepreneurial leadership
experience, including 15 years of desktop virtualization expertise. Pirker
strives to build enterprise-ready products that deliver value to customers
while changing the way users interact with technology.