As the healthcare industry faces an influx of mobile devices amid greater adoption of cloud applications and services, security is becoming increasingly complex.
At least in the short term. There are, of course, those who say that cloud computing will ultimately make medical information more secure than it is today, thanks in no small part to HIPAA regulations riding on the Final Rule on Privacy and Security. But in the meantime, providers and payers are left sorting it all out.
That makes this week's VMware-AirWatch deal all the more important.
While the deal is by no means limited to healthcare customers, cloud and virtualization specialist VMware has plunked down $2 billion, most in cash and the remainder in installment payments and unvested equity, to acquire AirWatch.
[Related: Measuring mHealth ROI in minutes saved.]
VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a prepared statement that AirWatch’s mobile management and security software will “add a foundational layer” to VMware’s end-user computing product roster. AirWatch co-founder Alan Dabbiere added the merger will enable customers to better “optimize for the mobile-cloud world.”
No doubt many of those more than 2 billion smartphones and tablets in the world, more than half of which Dabbiere claims “touch an enterprise,” are used by healthcare workers or people accessing some sort of health information.
Indeed, IDC ranked “BYOD will come to health monitoring and smartphones will become biosensors,” as second on its top 10 list of predictions for 2014. And security vendor Coalfire expects an uptick in mobile malware that can strike healthcare particularly hard since many business associates don’t even know they’re BAs and, as such, are susceptible to the omnibus HIPAA security regulations.
All of which paints a muddy picture of BYOD, cloud computing and security in healthcare today.
Which is not to say that VMware will solve every healthcare organization's problems by adding AirWatch’s mobile device management and security tools to its array, but considering that prior to the announcement an industry expert urged mHealth News readers to demand their cloud providers and hosts ratchet up security, one can likely expect more cloud infrastructure and application services vendors to either build their own BYOD security offerings or scoop up companies that already do.
See also:
Pharma slowly waking to the promise of social media
mHealth gets the feel of haptics and robotics
The human, regulatory, and tech limits of telemedicine
