Have you protected your health care IT systems yet?

In the last two decades, the use of IP technology in health care has increased dramatically as hardware has become more portable and affordable. Within just the last few years, new programs and systems have been developed that allow doctors to greatly improve the standard of care patients receive and even cut down on the number of doctors visits necessary for chronically ill patients.

According to information gathered by industrial safety services provider Mission Safety Services, global life expectancy increased by 5.8 years for men and 6.6 years for women between 1990 and 2013. Longer life spans are due in large part to the massive gains researchers have made in the fight against deadly diseases like cancer and malaria supported by improved technology.

Cancer: Currently 70 percent of those diagnosed with cancer can expect to live at least another five years, a 20 percent increase from just 40 years ago thanks to advanced treatments like molecularly targeted therapy made possible through innovative technology. The future of cancer research looks bright as well, with early detection processes being created and risk factor detection on the horizon.

Malaria: Mosquitoes carry this and other similar diseases, and they have killed more people than all of the world’s wars combined. According to the World Health Report, “during the first half of the 20th century, the world sustained around 2 million deaths from malaria each year,” equaling around 100 million deaths in that period alone. Now, however, new data has shown how and when the disease is most commonly contracted, allowing researchers to create new successful prevention methods. Chemically treated bed nets tested in a variety of areas in Africa were shown to reduce deaths in children five and younger by about 20 percent. Now researchers are using data science and advanced analytics tools to help track the movement of affected populations and see how it impacts the spread of the disease.

Technology a boon to doctors everywhere
Computers and the Internet are not only benefiting major research projects and patients in far off places, they are making a big difference at the hospital down the street and for patients with the common cold as well. Electronic health records have made patient care safer and more reliable, and social media allows doctors and hospitals to get in touch with patients to answer questions about treatments or raise awareness about certain campaigns. Online databases provide doctors (and patients) with a wealth of medical knowledge right at their fingertips. Online searches on sites like Google also help researchers analyze and pinpoint trends for things like the flu or chickenpox.

Protecting health care IT protects patients
With so much technology being used within health care environments, the health of IT systems is just as important as the health of patients. If a computer crashes or a program gets a bug, operations for the entire organization can be impacted. There are a variety of solutions that claim to support the health of medical IT systems, but few of them are able to ensure the uptime provided by Faronics’ Deep Freeze Enterprise program.

Deep Freeze helps to protect computers from viruses, zero-day threats and phishing schemes to keep endpoints safe from malicious actors. In particular, Deep Freeze offers an easy-to-use Reboot to Restore feature that allows IT administrators to retain the prior configuration of their devices before a virus or other malicious program appeared.