Your phone rings as you are on your way out the door for the evening. You pick it up only to hear a remote clinician telling you that their Electronic Medical Records (EMR) application is running slow. You start loading up your endpoint monitoring solution, synthetic logging tool, and network tools and get to work figuring out what the issue is. The clinician swears it's the network's fault. After all, it is either DNS or networking 99% of the time. After an hour of troubleshooting, you find out it wasn't the network… well, it wasn't your corporate network. It was the end user's Wi-Fi. They had an oversaturated channel and switching their device to another channel worked fine. You hang up the phone with a happy user, but you wonder if there is another way to troubleshoot or be proactive. Could I get faster time to resolution if I had a single pane of glass?
This is just one real-life example, but I have many more being in the EUC field for over 10 years. The common theme is, “it must be the network and certainly not my network.” The shift to remote work has also exasperated these types of situations. I see a few common themes such as; is it an ISP outage or my network? Is it application slowness for critical apps such as EMRs on the server end or user end? And how do I optimize telemedicine for the remote workforce? Introducing Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX), which can be a one-stop shop for all of these challenges and more. Let’s talk about ZDX in reference to those three themes.
Troubleshooting ISP outages:
Reliable internet connectivity is crucial for healthcare professionals working remotely. Any disruption in their connection can have serious consequences, including delayed patient care and compromised treatment.
Using ZDX, you can get network visibility and analytics, and the solution can detect and pinpoint network disruptions along the entire path—from the remote worker to the target application or service. It empowers IT personnel to identify the root cause of connectivity issues, whether it's a local ISP problem, a regional network outage, or any other bottleneck. With this insight, proactive measures can be taken to rectify the problem, ensuring uninterrupted access to critical healthcare systems and patient data. ZDX takes the guesswork out of, “is the problem my user’s device, internet, my data center’s firewall, my corporate ISP, etc?”
Critical app troubleshooting:
EMR applications are the backbone of modern healthcare, enabling efficient record-keeping, streamlined workflows, and secure patient information management. However, when EMR systems experience outages or slowness, healthcare professionals are left unable to access vital patient data, resulting in compromised care. It doesn’t just end at EMRs or Electronic Health Records (EHRs) either, it is any app that is deemed critical by your clinicians and hospital staff.
ZDX plays a pivotal role in troubleshooting critical app outages by providing real-time visibility into the performance and availability of these systems. By monitoring network traffic and user experience metrics, the solution can detect anomalies, performance bottlenecks, or system failures that may be causing the app outage or slowness. This actionable intelligence allows IT teams to collaborate effectively with vendors or internal support teams to address the issue promptly and minimize the impact on patient care.
Ensuring the best telemedicine experiences:
Telemedicine has revolutionized healthcare delivery by enabling remote consultations, reducing the need for in-person visits, and increasing accessibility for patients. However, ensuring a seamless telemedicine experience is contingent upon network performance, reliable video conferencing, and secure data transmission.
ZDX optimizes telemedicine experiences by continuously monitoring the network conditions and assessing the quality of service delivered during these virtual visits. The solution can identify bandwidth constraints, latency issues, or connectivity problems that may hinder smooth video and audio transmissions.
The continuously growing landscape of the remote workforce has shifted troubleshooting away from just the data center being the focal point but now to a user’s home network, every hop in between a user and the data center or SaaS application, and UCaaS applications. Zscaler Digital Experience is a valuable ally for IT teams supporting remote healthcare workforces. By proactively troubleshooting ISP outages, critical app outages, and telemedicine disruptions, this powerful solution ensures uninterrupted access to critical healthcare systems, enhances patient care, and improves overall operational efficiency.
This blog is the fourth and final blog in our series on securing healthcare with a zero trust architecture to do more with less. Read the other blogs here:
Empowering your healthcare organization to do more with less: Zero Trust Architecture
Zscaler Internet Access: Securing Your Hospital and Staff
Zscaler Private Access: Remote Access to Healthcare-Critical Applications
We look forward to exploring how Zscaler can help you do more with less, as we have for hundreds of other customers in the healthcare sector. You can also find more information on Zscaler for healthcare here.
