Linoma Touts Security Tool Installation at Connecticut Hospital

Revised: April 5, 2011

by Alex Woodie

Bristol Hospital is using Linoma Software's GoAnywhere Director software to ensure the secure transfer of sensitive records with outside parties, Linoma announced last week. Since GoAnywhere Director runs on Bristol Hospital's central IBM i server, it has avoided the need to move the data to less secure PCs prior to transfers, and eliminated the need for manual file transfers and courier services.

Bristol Hospital is a 134-bed hospital serving the greater Bristol area in north-central Connecticut. The organization is a long-standing IBM i shop, and relies on the RPG-based McKesson Series 2000 healthcare information system (HIS) for much of its data processing.

Like all hospitals, Bristol Hospital must balance the need to keep its patient records secure and compliant with HIPAA, while simultaneously sharing the records with necessary stakeholders, including doctors, insurance companies, third-party billing providers, and outside vendors.

The hospital was looking for a way to automate the transfer of electronic health record and insurance claim documents with these other entities, but to do so without inviting unnecessary security risks. It was using a combination of manual file transfers and courier services, which was time consuming and expensive. (It also didn't give Bristol Hospital as centralized an audit trail as it was probably expecting.)

According to Linoma, the organization considered adopting a collection of PC-based tools to achieve the desired automation. But the Hospital knew that copying sensitive data from its main system to PCs was a data security risk, Linoma says. So it sought a solution that could run on its main system.

The solution it finally chose was Linoma's GoAnywhere Director. GoAnywhere Director provides managed file transfer (MFT) capabilities that offers a plethora of options, including support for multiple operating systems, file transmission standards, and encryption algorithms. In addition to managing MFT activities, it also provides file conversion capabilities.

The tool has been a hit with Bristol Hospital's IT department. Jorge Machado, manager of applications, programming, and systems integration at the hospital, applauded the tool's "clean dashboard interface" and its handling of file transfer activities and audit logs. "It is a very intuitive application that required very little training to use," Machado says in a press release.

Bristol Hospital may also appreciate the multi-platform aspect of GoAnywhere Director. According to Linoma, Bristol Hospital is planning to change its core hardware platform in the next two years. While the IBM i server may or may not be in Bristol Hospital's long-range plans, Linoma's support for Linux, Unix, and Windows servers means the hospital won't have to change MFT tools.

For more information, see www.goanywheremft.com/products.

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