Storage vendors partner for HIPAA

A slew of storage vendors are announcing partnerships related to compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) this week at a medical conference in San Diego.

StorageTek announced two alliances at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems show. The first is with Stockwell, a healthcare consulting firm, to offer HIPAA Fast Path Gap Analysis, which lets organizations validate how they are meeting compliance for the April 14 privacy deadline. The second partnership is with Rorke Data, a subsidiary of Bell Microproducts, to support the dominant picture archival communications systems, hospital information systems and radiology information systems with its disk and tape systems.

EMC announced a partnership with Rogers Medical Intelligence Systems to support EMC Centera, the company’s content-addressable storage system that stores data such as medical images that don’t change over time. Rogers will also use EMC’s Clariion mid-range storage.

Dell and Securesoft Systems (SSI) announced this week an alliance to embed SSI’s Immunity Security Management Suite into Dell’s HIPAA Compliant Desktop, which is used in doctor’s offices and healthcare institutions for entering and updating patient records.

SSI will also unveil a HIPAA Remediation Technology Roadmap, which will show off its asset management, biometric access controls, integrated vulnerability analysis, automated patch installation, PKI messaging, non-repudiation and integrated privacy/security technologies.