Executive Summary
Imprivata®,a leading global provider of healthcare IT security solutions,recently conducted its third annual Desktop Virtualization Trends in Healthcare survey to identify
adoption rates and benefits of desktop virtualization in healthcare.Last year’s survey found that adoption of desktop virtualization was on the rise in the healthcareindustry,
as 40 percent of respondents said their organization used Server Hosted Virtual Desktops (SHVD) and 60 percent said they used Server Based Computing(SBC).For the 2013 survey,Imprivata made several modifications to garner additional insight in to desktop virtualization trends, including:
1.Respondents were asked to identify the primary benefit to IT and to end users for both SBC and SHVD
2.Respondents were asked to quantify how much time they were saving per user, per day by using SHVD combined with single sign on (SSO) and/or authentication management.
3.Respondents were asked about current and planned adoption of cloud computing, including the types of cloud based applications and services organizations are considering as well as the importance of HIPAA Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) with cloud vendors. Key findings from the 2013 survey include:Desktop
virtualization remains prevalent in healthcare, with 75 percent of respondents using SBC today and 57 percent using SHVD today.Compared to last year’s survey, SBC usage increased 23 percent and SHVD usage increased 39 percent, which is in line with the 12 month forecast from the 2012 survey
A mixed use of both SBC and SHVD is becoming more commonplace, with 49 percent of respondents indicating that they are using both technologies today (compared with 23 percent from the 2012survey). Organizations are using a variety of different endpoint devices for SBC and SHVD, with adoption rates of thin and zero clients increasing rapidly and tablets and smartphones emerging as endpoint devices in virtual desktop environments.For organizations that have no plans to adopt SHVD, the most common reason given is that “SBC satisfies their needs” for desktop virtualization, which is a significant shift from the 2012 survey when the primary barrier to SHVD adoption was cost.While the use of SSO and strong authentication remained relatively flat in both SBC and SHVD environments year over year, the number of organizations using a combination of the two increased for both SBC and SHVD.Of those respondents able to quantify the time savings of using SSO and/or strong authentication in their SHVD environments,31 percent said each end user saves more than 15 minutes per day.Adoption of cloud based applications and services in healthcare is increasing more quickly than expected, with 30 percent of respondents indicating that they are using cloud computing today (up from nine percent from the 2012 survey).In particular, storing protected health information (PHI) in the cloud is becoming more commonplace, with 40 percent of respondents that use cloud services indicating that they store PHI in the cloud today (up from nine percent from the 2012 survey).While the use of cloud based services and applications in healthcare is increasing,71 percent of healthcare
organizations currently using cloud computing work with just one or two vendors.Despite working with a limited number of vendors, 16 percent of healthcare respondents using cloud computing today do not have HIPAA BAAs in place with all of their vendors.For healthcare organizations that have no plans to adopt cloud computing, security remains the primary barrier, but 17 percent cite the top reason as “cloud services vendors do not offer HIPAA Business
