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Biotech / Medical : WebMD Health Corp -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tech101 who wrote (272)	4/30/2001 12:24:11 PM
From: tech101	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 326

Rush to compliance spurs 'feeding frenzy' -- Brian Fonseca infoworld.com Although it is still months from going into effect, Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA) legislation is already prompting a barrage of security and privacy IT changes across medical and health care networks. As a result, a diverse array of vendors racing to help industry customers pull off complex HIPAA implementations and planning strategies have begun to circle their targets, according to Charles Dulin, director of PKI (public key infrastructure) architecture at Hawthorne, N.Y.-based Internet Privacy Solutions. "I would say the [HIPAA] privacy piece right now is extremely hot," Dulin said. "It's a new feeding frenzy for [vendors] to grab hold of new business opportunities." Dulin added that, in his opinion, companies that are busily hawking HIPAA solutions are still unsure of exactly what technology to best offer customers to solve their IT challenges. Dulin said many vendors are looking to partner with smaller companies that have experience in the health care field to gain insight they do not yet possess. Security markets, including authentication, encryption, smart cards, documentation, biometrics, and access control, are taking advantage of the HIPAA window of opportunity. Clinical application vendors and even telcos have shown interest in HIPAA. With so much back-end system and application integration needed to comply with HIPAA, customers are finding that a combination of vendor products will be necessary to address the privacy and security mandates of the regulations, said John Ticer, CEO of Vienna, Va.-based BioNetrix. "I don't believe there is any one vendor that is going to give you HIPAA compliance in a box," Ticer said. Similar to companies that faced a flurry of Y2K preparations, vendors realize their products or applications can ill afford to be branded "non-HIPAA compliant," Ticer said.