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It’s getting to be that time again. The time for tens of thousands of healthcare professionals to gather for a five day conference focused on all the hot-button issues in healthcare IT and policy. The time for 1,300 exhibitors to convene in a hall a mile long (literally), to show off their innovative solutions and technologies. The time for HIMSS 2014. This year the national HIMSS conference is going to be February 23-27 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL. There will be four keynote speakers, over 300 pre-conference workshops and sessions, and five days of networking possibilities. The big topics this year are: Clinical & Business Intelligence ICD-10 Interoperability Meaningful Use Mobile Health Patient Engagement Value of Health IT Online Tech will be at the HIMSS 2014 conference, exhibiting our range of HIPAA compliant hosting solutions. From colocation to encrypted enterprise clouds, we’re dedicated to providing a secure and compliant environment for the healthcare community. We’ll be at booth 3904, so don’t forget to come say hello when you get to Orlando. Haven’t registered for HIMSS 2014 yet? You can get your tickets here, and don’t forget to check out the schedule-at-a-glance to find the topics and…
Online Tech is in Columbus this month, speaking at the Columbus chapter of the international Security B-Sides conference series. The B-Sides event will be on January 20th, at Doctor’s Hospital West. Steven Aiello, our Senior Product Engineer, will be presenting on the intricacies of building a securable infrastructure. Online Tech will also be one of the sponsors for the event. Security B-Sides is a grassroots security conference, built and tended to by the information security community both locally and globally. The structure for these conferences changes by location, depending on what benefits the local infosec community the most, ranging from unstructured conversations on a general topic, to a tightly scheduled itinerary. Building Securable Infrastructures Steve’s talk will work to answer the question “How do I design my environment to be securable?” In a world of bolted-on post-implementation security solutions, it’s hard to break free from the cycle of adding to an insecure foundation. Steve posits that designing an infrastructure with a focus on ‘baking in’ security from the start can help companies become more successful. There are many important questions that have to be answered in order to design and build an infrastructure that can be made fundamentally secure. Here…
Farewell, 2013. It was a notable year at Online Tech for many reasons. While we’re already focused on 2014 and beyond – and certainly want to wish all of you a happy and prosperous new year – allow us a moment to reflect on the year that was: LEADERSHIP: We started the year by eschewing traditional corporate leadership structure and announcing a new co-CEO arrangement between Online Tech founder Yan Ness and President and Chief Operating Officer Mike Klein. Both are quick to say that co-CEOs wouldn’t work for most companies or with most business leaders, but the arrangement works for them because of their long working relationship and complimentary strengths. “Many companies are built around one leader at the head of the pack. We want to build a stronger, more resilient company — with exceptional people delivering exceptional experiences for our clients,” Ness said. “We believe partnerships that encourage everyone to contribute their very best are far more powerful than packs where everyone is struggling to be on top.” GROWTH: In November, Online Tech announced the addition of a new, world class data center facility in metro Detroit. The new center, combined with the company’s two facilities in Ann…
When a company decides to use a third party hosting provider instead of hosting in-house, it’s a big commitment, and a big change. A company should be comfortable trusting their provider, and confident that their data and applications are safe and secure. I interviewed Noah Wolff, Online Tech’s Project Manager, to learn more about his role in fostering the incredibly important client-provider relationship. In a nutshell, Noah says of his job, “I’m in charge of deployments. It’s my job to make sure clients are deployed quickly, accurately, and with a good customer experience.” I suppose that sounds simple enough, but there’s much to do on the backend to fulfill that promise. Once an order has been signed, Noah is notified, and he has an internal kickoff meeting. The kickoff meeting is between Noah, the sales person, and a sales engineer. This is to go through the order with a fine tooth comb, checking for any errors, questions, or problems. After Noah gives the thumbs-up, the sales rep schedules a meeting with Noah and the client. Noah carefully reviews the entire order again, this time to make sure everyone’s on the same page: “It’s to set expectations with the client, let…
Anyone who has walked into an Online Tech data center has had the opportunity to note the care we put into keeping our centers clean, secure, and functional. With our new data center putting us over 100 thousand square feet of space, that’s a lot of facility to tend to every day. Lucky for us, we have Noah Wark, our Facilities Guru. I had a chance to sit down with Noah and get a better idea of the breadth of his function at Online Tech, and how he finds a way to use this role to make a difference to our clients. Noah Wark is a CDCP (Certified Data Center Professional) whose main goal is to help increase uptime in any physical way possible, as well as be an onsite liaison for clients who need help meeting the needs of their physical environment. “I support everyone in the company who is responsible for uptime. I make sure people have the physical resources to be at an optimal level of productivity at work.” What does that look like? It varies day to day, minute to minute. With projects like the new generators put in at our mid-michigan data center, vendor management…
Online Tech has been bullish on growth recently. We announced a fourth Michigan data center, doubled both our employee count and the square footage at our company headquarters, and have plans to spread our roots across the Midwest. But rest assured, none of that growth will come at the expense of our focus on security and compliance standards. In fact, our most recent additions only strengthened that mission. Meet Nicholas Lumsden and Judson Pitt. Lumsden is our new Director of Infrastructure and Pitt an Enterprise Architect. Both have extensive healthcare IT experience and bring an expert understanding of HIPAA compliance to Online Tech’s range of hosting options. (See full press release.) Lumsden, a Michigan native, returned to the Great Lake State after working as the principal technical architect at Inovalon, a healthcare data analytics company based in the Washington DC area. Pitt was previously the Director of Information Technology at Hospice of Northwest Ohio, extending a healthcare-focused career that includes seven years in various roles at ProMedica Health Systems. He is now responsible for everything within Online Tech’s four Michigan data centers, from the generators to the cooling systems to the server infrastructures to the individual racks. “From a HIPAA…
Retail giant Target became the target of a data breach that potentially involved 40 million customer credit and debit card records. The retailer isn’t saying how the breach happened, but Avivah Litan, a security analyst with Gartner Research, has a strong opinion. She told The Associated Press that given the millions of dollars Target spends on security each year, she believes the breach may have been an “inside job.” Various mainstream media sources reported the story late Wednesday after the Secret Service confirmed it was investigating the breach. Security researcher Brian Krebs broke the story days earlier, accurately reporting Target was investigating a breach that started at brick-and-mortar stores on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, and continued through Dec. 15. Online orders were not affected. Krebs reported that thieves gained access to data on the magnetic strips of shoppers’ cards, potentially allowing them to produce counterfeit versions. If thieves had been able to intercept PIN data, they could potentially withdraw cash from ATMs using counterfeit debit cards. In a release from Target this morning confirming the breach, PIN data was not among the list of information compromised. The company reports data involved in the incident include…
As the entire healthcare system evaluates health IT solutions with the potential to reduce inefficiencies and improve – or at least maintain – health outcomes, care providers are increasingly open to new paradigms of care. Take Children’s Hospital Boston who, through its Community Asthma Initiative (CAI), helped children with asthma make their homes more “asthma-friendly” by conducting home visits and evaluations. In a study reported in the March 2012 issue of Pediatrics, the initiative showed a remarkable result: cost savings AND better outcomes. The program cost $2,529 per child, but saved $3,827 per child with fewer returns to the emergency room and hospital re-admissions. As care options become increasingly mobile, it’s not surprising that mobile devices are coming along for the ride. Pediatrician Drew Nash in California uses the popular Square to collect patient payments both in the office and on the road. Of course, the use of mobile devices for any type of sensitive information – especially the valuable combination of ePHI (electronic Protected Health Information) and card holder data – is an IT security or compliance officer’s worst fear and a hacker’s greatest delight. It’s critical that key safeguards are in place. As health IT attorney Tatiana Melnik comments in…
Dealing with strict personal health information protocol on a daily basis, many members of the healthcare industry are well aware of the importance of data protection. According to a story in today’s Boston Globe, two healthcare-related groups who may be more familiar with HIPAA compliance got an unfortunate lesson in the importance of PCI compliance. Hundreds of attendees at an American Public Health Association conference and an American Society of Human Genetics conference, both held at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center this fall, had credit card information stolen. It was used to purchase goods across the country. One of the victims was Edward McCabe, the chief medical officer for the March of Dimes. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) applies to organizations that handle cardholder information for credit, debit, ATM, and point-of-sale cards. It remains unclear in these instances where the breakdown in that standard occurred. The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, which operates the convention center, told the newspaper the data breach did not happen at its facility, and that several of its own employees were affected. The Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel, connected to the conference center, say the breaches did not happen within its system….
There’s much to talk about here at the mHealth summit in National Harbor, MD. Here’s a peek at what we’ve been hearing thus far today: Opening Remarks: Sharon D. Agostino, VP Corporate Citizenship, Johnson & Johnson. Sharon spoke about Johnson & Johnson’s participation in MAMA (Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action), a mobile health initiative that sends expecting mothers mobile information throughout their pregnancy and the first year after childbirth to help bolster confidence and have the right conversations with their physicians. This is being used in over 50 countries. “We need to invest in learning more about how mobile health can change lives.” During the morning keynote, Astrid Krag spoke. Astrid is the Minister of Health & Prevention with the Danish Ministry of Health & Prevention. “My claim is this: we could start a new revolution, if we can embrace mobile.” It has to be a patient driven revolution. Patient empowerment and mobile health as a backbone of healthcare. Mobile health is going to help change the way we have our healthcare administered. It can reduce the number of simple checkups at the hospital by helping people manage their medical concerns. It can also help prevent acute deterioration in the…