Distributors Dispense IT Remedies to Cure Health-Care Woes

Not only is the use of paper files inefficient and cost-prohibitive, but it also breeds a host of other problems, such as privacy and confidentiality issues, data-security concerns, storage and archive-space consumption, and communication delays.

To push the health-care industry and its thousands of hospitals, pharmacies, medical-research facilities and doctors' offices to reform, the United States Congress enacted the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. More specifically, HIPAA is the federal law that sets strict guidelines for securing patient information and standards for how patient data can be accessed and transported electronically. And with a mid-April compliance deadline fast approaching, health-care companies are looking to channel partners to help cure their IT ills.

"The deadline is looming at this point," says Erik Ohngemach, director of government field sales at Tech Data. "That is why we're seeing more activity." Nevertheless, channel executives believe the HIPAA deadline is soft, as projects will most likely extend out for several years because of the magnitude and scope of the legislation.

For their part, distributors have organized internal resources to help educate VARs and provide the professional services and technical support they need to seize health-care IT opportunities. For example, Ingram Micro created a specific health-care initiative that provides resources to VARs trying to help organizations achieve HIPAA compliance. As part of the initiative, the distributor educated its support and sales staffs about HIPAA, prepared a series of VAR training sessions and configured a set of bundled health-care solutions that will be available soon.

As part of its technical support team, Ingram Micro also assembled a HIPAA help desk to answer VARs' questions and help them understand regulations and configure solutions.

"HIPAA is just a huge, huge opportunity for Ingram Micro and its VARs," says Bob Laclede, vice president of the government and education division at Ingram Micro. "It's just got solution opportunities all over it."

Executives at Indianapolis-based Support Net, the IBM distribution arm of Arrow Electronics, agree. The distributor sees demand for data management, digital imaging, storage and archiving, security, network communications and infrastructure solutions. More specifically, Support Net expects to see growing interest in EMC's Centerra, an archival product adapted for patient records. On the connectivity side, Support Net expects health-care organizations to invest in the bigger pipes necessary to send, retrieve and store data. Also, demand will grow for McData's Director class products and Hitachi enterprise storage, it says.

Solution providers must also think beyond patient records, says Jeff Silver, vice president of sales and marketing at Savvy Data, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based security consultant and solution provider. Personnel files, corporate and human-resources records, and research and development formulas are also at risk. Savvy Data recently developed its own internal security software called Red Alert to help organizations prevent internal attacks. "If you are not providing your customers with an internal security solution, you are doing them a great disservice," Silver says.

The American Medical Association estimates the cost of restructuring the health-care industry, as a result of HIPAA, at more than $43 billion during the next few years, Savvy Data notes.

To get in on the action, solution providers should not approach HIPAA-related projects as government opportunities, but instead view health-care organizations as commercial companies, Tech Data's Ohngemach says. The distributor is helping VARs attack HIPAA-related projects through two fronts: its government-services and enterprise-services organizations, he adds. Tech Data says its government experts can sort through HIPAA-compliance regulations to ease solution design and configuration. Additionally, Tech Data,and many other distributors,have experts who can assist VARs in developing RFPs for larger hospitals and health-care organizations.

Further, some distributors have professional-services organizations that can augment a VAR's services or engineering team. Comstor, for example, has been educating its customers through its FutureTrack Web-based training series since last spring.