Verizon dangles carrot to bring cloud to healthcare
October 1, 2012
Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Larry Dignan.
The healthcare industry hasn’t been a big fan of cloud computing. In fact, even co-located and hosted data centers are a stretch due to security and privacy regulations. Verizon, however, aims to change that equation and just might succeed. Verizon’s enterprise unit, bolstered by its Terremark cloud computing portfolio, on Monday launched a portfolio of services designed to meet HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) requirements.
In a nutshell, health care players—payers, insurers and hospitals—will be able to host patient information in Verizon’s Terremark data centers. Verizon also plans to offer co-location, managed hosting, cloud and private cloud services. Verizon’s enterprise cloud services plan starts with healthcare, but can scale to other industries. How will Verizon court healthcare? HIPAA requirements and various providers in the industry are held together by something called a business associate agreement (BAA). The BAA dictates that each party that touches patient data is required to meet HIPAA standards. If one party in the data chain fumbles it is liable for penalties and fines…
That BAA has limited the popularity of data center hosting. Dr. Peter Tippett, chief medical officer and vice president of Verizon’s health IT practice, said the telecom giant will sign a BAA. Verizon is among the first large players to sign a BAA…
Read more from the source @ http://www.zdnet.com/verizon-dangles-carrot-to-bring-cloud-to-healthcare-7000004795/