5G is coming. And it’s coming fast.

Right now, carriers are giving deals to help people switch from older platforms. If you’ve been using 4G, you’ll instantly notice speed, coverage, and reliability improvements. That’s reason enough to change.

As a healthcare provider, you have a full array of activities to fill your days.

Seeing patients
Consulting with peers
Interacting with employees
Handling daily tasks
Dealing with immediate problems
Staying up to date with guidelines and regulations

Have you ever felt like you’re handling a 24-hour job in just 8 hours?

Now add in technology.

As a medical provider, how often do you think about the impact of HIPAA on your standard policies and procedures? Are you handling protected health information according to guidelines? Or are you putting data and information in compromising situations daily?

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR), the five most common compliance issues investigated include:

Impermissible uses and disclosures of protected health information
Lack of safeguards when dealing with protected health information
Lack of patient access to their protected health information
Lack of administrative safeguards when dealing with protected health information
Lack of technical safeguards when dealing with protected health information

As a response, the American Medical Association has created a Patient Records Electronic Access Playbook to aid in helping medical professionals define the roles they have in sharing and safeguarding patient health records.

It’s hard to imagine healthcare without technology. It exists in every aspect, from signing up patients on a website to tracking personal data using wearable technology. We use it to virtually connect with patients and experts, and help control medications and diseases.

It’s hard to imagine being in business these days without a website.

Web design trends change quickly, and if you’re not staying on top of critical changes, it may be costing you more than you think.

While a great website can attract new clients, as it becomes outdated, it can deter people from trusting you, including existing patients.

One laptop is stolen every 53 seconds. Seventy million smartphones are lost each year, with only 7 percent recovered.

The statistics are scary, yet most of us hang to the “not us” belief as we go about our busy days.

We read the stories. We know we should take security more seriously.

2020 was a year of rapid growth for telehealth. Desire for the technology happened so fast, many healthcare organizations jumped on board with various video conferencing and messaging apps without really thinking about the consequences. And that left vulnerabilities.

It’s easy to do. You’re bored. You head over to the app store and browse. You find something that looks interesting, download it, and start using it.

Rinse. Repeat. Until your phone is filled with a variety of applications you may or may not use.

Privilege. It’s defined as: a special right or advantage granted or available only to a particular individual or group.

In an information technology context, privilege is the authority granted to an account or process within a system or network. Privilege provides the necessary authorization to override, bypass, or otherwise move past security constraints to gain access to accounts or systems.

Have you ever logged in when you arrive at the office, clicked to get work done, and sat there waiting while everything loads? You wait, and wait some more. You open a new browser window. Maybe reboot to try and speed things up. You have work to do, and this is slowing you down.