Hospital executives say the hardest part of a "bring your own device" strategy involves separating personal data from business data. A physician who submits a prescription for a patient through his smartphone doesn't necessarily want the pharmacy to see his family vacation photos from Disney World.
But with clinicians demanding that they be able to use their personal devices in the hospital setting and administrators wanting to stay out of the hardware business, BYOD is a popular and continuing trend. To keep that data separate and secure, Verizon and VMware have launched VMware Horizon Mobile, a so-called "dual persona" solution that protects corporate information sitting on those devices.
"The mobility space today … is going more and more towards the individual bringing (his or her) own device into the work environment, and healthcare is definitely not unique in that regard," said Mike Ross, director of healthcare mobility solutions for Verizon Enterprise Solutions. "What we're seeing there, though, is that there are more and more individual users in the system," and those users need managed devices and application-managed solutions to comply with HIPAA concerns.
Available now on Android-based LG Intuition and RAZR M by Motorola smartphones (more devices will be supported in the near future, executives say), VMware Horizon Mobile creates a virtualized operating system that separates personal and business data and can be controlled by IT managers, who remotely provision the workspace, deploy applications and monitor the flow of information.
“Today’s mobile users expect to move fluidly between corporate and personal tasks on their smartphones,” said Bill Versen, director of mobile solutions for Verizon Enterprise Solutions, in a recent press release. “With the VMware Horizon Mobile dual persona solution, Verizon enterprise customers can deliver corporate data and applications to their employees’ mobile devices without impacting their personal settings and experience while ensuring that corporate information is under IT’s control with a complete audit trail.”
“The evolving needs of IT and end users in the multi-device era often put employee choice in conflict with enterprise security concerns,” added Erik Frieberg, vice president of product marketing in end-user computing for Palo Alto, Calif.-based VMware. “This solution enables VMware to extend a virtual workspace onto any VMware Ready Android device on the Verizon Wireless network and immediately introduce enterprise-class security to help IT simplify the management and protection of corporate data and applications.”
At a time when data breaches arising from lost or stolen mobile devices seem to be a monthly occurrence, Verizon and VMware are pushing this solution into the healthcare space. Ross pointed out the solution isn't meant solely for healthcare, but "the ongoing ability to architect and protect information is at the core" of a healthcare network's mobile platform. "This gives (healthcare) the foundation for meeting ongoing requirements and securing the mobile device."
Among the early users of VMware Horizon Mobile is Beaumont Memorial Hospital in Beaumont, S.C.
“Having a virtual workspace available on smartphones using the VMware Horizon platform gives us an unobtrusive way to more securely offer applications to mobile care givers and maintain control of the data while minimizing worry about potential data breaches,” said Edward Ricks, the hospital's chief information officer, in the press release “This dual persona approach gives us full control over our data on personally owned or corporate-owned mobile devices without requiring us to unnecessarily manage the entire device.”
