Healthcare Systems stuck in 1980

Healthcare IT News: “King’s Daughters’ Health officials told Indiana’s WSCH radio that patient data was secure and had not been compromised, and that it would restart its computer systems once it is safe to do so. In the meantime, KDH is using manual processes to continue operations.”

My brother and I were just talking about this yesterday. The article above puts a pretty face on a real problem. This does impact patient safety. It continually surprises me how far behind most hospitals IT system are. Most of these shops run on PC’s which is perfectly fine. The problem is most of those systems are many generations of OS behind. If your hospital is running Windows 7 today, it should be updated. Windows 10 is now the current OS, get in the game to protect your infrastructure. If you’re using software from third-party vendors that only operates on Windows 7, in an ancient browser, or relies on ActiveX controls (goodness, I hope you’re not using these) you should demand your vendor upgrade their software to work or find something better, something modern, something that’s maintained.

The bottom line is this: Crappy, out of date, software can impact patient care.