Health Information Exchange Featured Article

March 16, 2012

Citrix Better Connects Patients to Doctors in Houston Healthcare & Seattle Children's Hospital



Exchange of patient data across various hospitals and physicians is a boon to both patients and medical facilities that must ensure quick and enhanced relief to patients. At the same time, due to the critical and sensitive nature of the patient data, it is mandatory to make sure it's transferred safetly and securely.

Citrix, a provider of advanced virtualization based solutions, has enabled Houston Healthcare from Georgia and Seattle Children’s Hospital to use an enhanced virtualization system that offers secure mobile access to their physicians.

With the help of mobile devices, these physicians and other health care providers can access the patient data in a secure environment, irrespective of their location. Smartphones and tablet devices have made them even more convenient, allowing them to keep in touch with their patients whether in their offices or at the patient’s bedside in the hospital.

Citrix’s solutions feature XenApp, an on-demand application delivery solution that allows enterprises to virtualize, centralize and manage all their Windows applications within the data center. These applications are available to users on a number of devices.

The Citrix Receiver is also a client software solution that helps users access vital data and applications from smartphones, tablets and PCs.

Houston Healthcare had initiated a new hospital electronic medical record or ‘EMR’ system named Meditech 6.0 in November 2011, with an aim to digitize its entire data and abolish the paper records procedure for the future.

“With the new system, physicians can walk into the hospital with their iPads and are able to access the hospital’s physician network using those devices,” commented Robert Rhodes, Chief Information Officer at Houston Healthcare, emphasizing how the organization has tackled mobile device security for physicians.

“They are authenticated, they fire up a Citrix session, and log into the Meditech EMR system. The physicians are able to visit patients in the hospital, look up lab results and other relevant information, and then go back to their office using the same device,” Rhodes added.

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society recently conducted a study, in which it was found that 159 of 164 hospitals use mobile devices to access health care information.

Apart from this, the research emphasizes that while just 38 percent of health care organizations had adopted a formal policy for mobile device use, another 51 percent were looking to.

DynTek, Inc. announced that it has been awarded Citrix Authorized Learning Center or ‘CALC’ Top Regional Partner, Western Region for 2011, earlier this month. Citrix recognized its training program for its ability to provide a superior Citrix training experience to their students, drive training revenue for that region, and collaborate with Citrix Education on ways to grow the business. 

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