Essay Example on Healthcare Organizations technology Side

With healthcare things are constantly changing that is on the technology side of things Technology is constantly evolving day by day, therefore, all healthcare organizations need to be and should be up to date with everything especially when it comes to accessing and securing data Before there were any HIPAA guidelines and standards all forms that healthcare organizations used were paper-based which meant they had to be filed away once one was finished with it This was the standard way of doing things because this is all they had back then but I'm sure there was a major concern when it came to the protection of the sensitive data they had possession of hence the main reasons why HIPAA became about Healthcare data is so significantly important and highly sensitive so it's a must that it be secured at all times 

When it comes to transmitting data the healthcare industry has to be ranked highly in this particular area because they process several documents daily These documents include patients personal information medical records insurance information reimbursements etc data can be transmitted via LAN local area network as well as WAN wide area network LAN is a collection of devices that share a line of communication or wireless link to the server Rouse 2016 WAN is a communication network that covers a large geographic area Rouse 2016 In order for healthcare data to be transmitted securely healthcare organizations have a host of different mechanisms available to them that allows them to do so via either LAN or WAN One mechanism that can be used to transmit data securely is VPNs virtual private network A VPN is a private network that allows individuals as well as businesses to securely send and receive data via the Internet It helps provide a secure tool for encrypting and encapsulating private network traffic and moving it along Microsoft 2003 Although VPN is a private network and can be used to transmit data it is not HIPAA compliant It is said that if the VPN is set up quite well then it is secure however VPNs have been said to not be 100 secured because they possibly leave MAC addresses and service set IDs unencrypted Solomonov 2014 Your VPN is only as secure as you make it For instance if your system has been compromised once already using a VPN won't make you that much of a difference this second time around so it's best to secure your systems as quickly as you possibly can before trying to transmit data over 

Some advantages of using a VPN are as followed Scalability Cost Centralized resources Easy sharing Remote access Some disadvantages to using a VPN are as followed Using a mobile device to initiate connectivity to the virtual private network can cause security issues especially if the connection is wireless The design and security implementation for a VPN can be very complex Reliability can become a factor depending on the service provider that is chosen You have to remember when using a VPN you have to think about certain things like where a person so happens to be when they are accessing this type of information Even though you re using a secure tunnel to send and receive this healthcare data once it goes through it still pops up on each parties screen so you have to be very careful who you are around when accessing thus said information Another mechanism that can be used to transmit data securely is frame relay Frame relay is the transmission of data between LANs and endpoints in WANs Rouse 2015 Frame relay networks are put in place so that they can decrease congestion during the transmittance of data In order to decrease congestion if it were to occur they would do so by dropping packets in excess of what you are guaranteed on the network Rouse 2007 Some advantages to using frame relay are as followed It offers higher speeds This is done simply because there is no error detection incorporated which makes the overhead less The network overhead is less due to incorporation of congestion control mechanism It operates at layer 1 physical and layer 2 datalink It allows frame size of 9000 bytes which is enough for all the LAN frame types It offers guaranteed throughput and delay It provides secured connection as it is difficult to break into PVCs between the sites 

The disadvantages to frame relay are as followed The flow control and error control is not available in frame relay Packets to incur additional delay with every node they pass through It involves data overhead and processing overhead with every packet It allows variable-length frames and hence may create varying delays for different users Due to varying delay it is not suitable to send sensitive data like real-time voice or video It can operate at 44 376 Mbps and hence it is not suitable for protocols requiring higher data rates In conclusion there are several different mechanisms that one can use when trying to transmit data securely When it comes to healthcare and the data that they are HIPAA plays an important factor when it comes to healthcare because you