VDI News Roundup: Week of May 29

In case you didn’t have time to keep up with this week’s virtual desktop headlines, here are a few of our favorites for the week of May 22, 2017. This week the best of the best both deal with how the healthcare industry in particular is embracing virtual desktops and cloud solutions.

Understanding HIPAA-Compliant Cloud Options for Health IT

This article by HIT Infrastructure gives a nice high-level overview of healthcare’s general attitude toward cloud solutions. In general, healthcare organizations have been historically hesitant to adopt cloud solutions because of security – and more specifically HIPAA compliance – concerns. With HIPAA compliant cloud solutions hitting the market, healthcare is moving to catch up and are interested in a range of cloud based services.

The piece touches on a few specific “as a service’ solutions that healthcare organizations are beginning to adopt as they become more comfortable with security and HIPAA compliance standards and recognize the productivity and cost benefits of moving to the cloud. Though it doesn’t specifically discuss desktop as a service, DaaS is a niche within the larger SaaS space and many of these trends are extending to the desktop (more on that below).

Favorite quote:

“Cloud technology is complementary to the fast-paced environments characteristic of most healthcare settings. Sharing data across organizations becomes more manageable and less inconvenient, which may result in improved patient services and collaboration between healthcare organizations and professionals.

While cloud-based tools afford healthcare organizations many benefits, they function differently than legacy storage or information sharing solutions, and they can produce their own unique privacy and security concerns.

Because users access data through an internet connection, HIPAA compliance becomes a serious consideration for healthcare organizations looking into cloud solutions for various aspects of their infrastructure.”

Read the full article >>

How Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Supports Patient Care

Value based care is a major trend within healthcare these days, and organizations are looking for new solutions to help them achieve this goal. This article by HIT Infrastructure digs into how virtual desktops are helping healthcare providers maximize time with patients by drastically reducing how much time is wasted logging into all the applications a care provider needs as they move from room to room or patient to patient. Basically, with virtual desktops they only have to log into one system as they move and every other application they need is already logged into within their secure, personal virtual desktop environment.

Reduced infrastructure from moving off of large legacy systems to an OPEX as a service approach is another key driver of healthcare organizations adopting cloud based desktops.

Favorite quote:

“Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and virtual infrastructure solutions have become more prominent ways for healthcare organizations to consolidate health IT systems and save on infrastructure costs while increasing operational efficiency.”

Read the full article >>