Healthcare is an industry where data plays a very important role, and so, by extension, are mainframes. Data of patients, billings, quality management, and thousands of insurance transaction takes place every hour of the day.
Regulations such as HIPAA demand for proper security of these data, an area in which mainframe excels. The requirement to pass the patient records to and fro from the organization has sparked a demand for standardized patient electronic health records (EHR’s), which requires mainframe-style increased storage as well as Linux-style Web standards.
Reasons why healthcare providers and insures choose mainframe platform:
- Security and compliance
A data breach in any industry, especially in the healthcare industry, can be very devastating. Think about the variety and sensitive data such as patient’s address, contact information, medical records, doctor’s orders, billing, and financial information and more which will be handled by healthcare providers on a regular basis. All these sensitive patient data needs to be kept secure and also in compliance with regulations like HIPAA. With HIPAA, data not only needs to remain secure but also need accountability and also be auditable.
Hence healthcare needs the most secure systems available to protect these data. Mainframes have a reputation as the most securable platform. Mainframe servers and software now have pervasive encryption of data. These security measures help the healthcare organization to protect their patient’s data and privacy.
- Scalability
Data in healthcare can be overwhelming. The sheer volume of information that the IT team needs to deal with is unimaginable data between the hospital, insurance companies, and medical networks and also remote monitoring devices, online medical research, the scope of the information management problem becomes vast. The mainframe is the best platform to handle this enormous data.
- Reliability
Healthcare systems require computer systems to be up and running all the time. All the information stored should be accessible anytime anywhere in a fraction of seconds. If the medical device systems are breached or have downtime for any reasons, that treatment cannot be accurately managed which can prove to be troublesome and place patient care at risk. Mainframes uptime number is just about 100%, that’s another reason for healthcare providers to choose mainframe.
- Ease of Integration
Mainframes are incredibly easy to integrate along with being reliable, which is important for healthcare companies having large IT departments where hundreds of people need to be able to collaborate seamlessly. And with many mergers and acquisitions in the industry, integration is absolutely essential. Mainframes are endlessly adaptable, which makes them easy to use for anyone.
- Adaptability
Mainframes are designed to support several kinds of applications, and there is no better adaptable platform. That’s the reason why even after debuting 50 years ago, they are still being used.
These are a few reasons, but there are dozens of other reasons why leading major healthcare companies such as Aetna, Cigna, and Blue cross use and rely on mainframes to provide the best possible care and maximize efficiency
