Single sign on (SSO) solutions in healthcare

Based on my recent discussions with numerous CIOs, they each mention that SSO is something that’s on their radar screens as an important or high priority requirement. Given that most users deal with multiple IT systems during the day and they’re getting tired of re-authenticating themselves for each system, it’s understandable. While the commercial vendors already tout their own (pretty good in some cases) solutions I thought I’d bring some of you up to speed on one open source solution that you may not be aware of: the Central Authentication System (CAS).

Adobe recently announced the release of its Acrobat 8 product line. Acrobat (and the associated PDF format) is in heavy use within the healthcare industry because of it’s ability to manage paper documents in electronic format with high fidelity. One of the important new features of Acrobat 8 is Acrobat Connect which allows users to start a Web conference to collaborate on any kind of document (not just PDFs). What’s great about Acrobat Connect (which I’ve used recently) is that it has the ability to easily collaborate on medical records, diagnosis charts, simultaneously view lab reports, etc.

Your friendly neighborhood healthcare bloggers are preparing for another meetup at the HIMSS ‘07 conference next month in New Orleans. Last year’s meetup was a smashing success so we’re looking forward to another great gathering this year. If you’re a healthcare blogger who’d like to meet other bloggers/readers or a reader that would like to meet their favorite bloggers, we have an automated registration database available to express your interest.

If you’re looking for a simple and fast way of trying out free EMR and practice management software, check out the OpenEMR 2.8.1 Virtual Machine Appliance. All you need to run it is a computer with VMware Server (freely available). It comes complete with an operating system and all the software you need. Here’s how the authors describe it: This is a comprehensive Open Source Medical Practice Management Software Appliance.

The NSA’s unclassified 60 Minute Network Security Guide is a great way to check that your network security is up to par with the nation’s pre-eminent spy agency’s guidelines. Check it out and see if your network measures up — leave some comments here to tell us what you think about the guidance provided.

A few readers were kind enough to nominate my blog for the MedGadget Medical Blog Award in the Best Medical Technologies/Informatics Weblog category. Voting is now open; so, if you like this blog, let Medgadget know. Thanks in advance for your support!

The Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) has announced plans to host an Open Source Health Care summit as part of their upcoming 2007 conference, SCALE 5x. The event will be held on February 9, 2007 at the Los Angeles Airport Westin Hotel. Here’s what they say about it: The focus of this event will be on the use of open-source software in the health care industry. The goal of this event is to foster an awareness of the availability of open-source options to medical organizations, private practices, and hospitals.

Given the increase in computer usage to track patient data and that we’re all now going through new cycles of computer purchases (especially with Vista coming soon) discarding older equipment is something we do often. Discarded equipment may include entire computers or just hard disks, thumb drives, and other storage devices. One thing I’ve been discussing with my clients is their strategy for protecting information on discarded devices and it makes sense to review your own policies.

Healthcare data ownership is an important issue and I was pleased to run across Pardalis, a company specializing it. Although they don’t focus only on healthcare, they intrigued me because they appear to be a cross between a nascent supply chain Google, eBay, and author-controlled Wikipedia. That is, they claim to be able to increase availability of on-demand healthcare information (which lots of companies are doing) but they provide real-time control over the process of sharing such information to patients and healthcare information producers (which very few allow today).

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