HIPAA News

Aruba Secure Mobility Solutions to Help Golden Living meet HIPAA Compliance

(Aprl 01, 2008)-- Aruba Networks and Golden Living, a family of companies that provides care and services that directly or indirectly serve the elderly and disabled, today announced that Aruba is providing secure mobility solutions for HIPAA-compliant pharmaceutical management at Golden Living facilities across North America. The solution enables staff to manage medications for residents in a secure and efficient manner. The project encompasses 331 Golden LivingCenters (skilled nursing facilities) and 19 Golden Living Communities (assisted living facilities) in 22 states. Each location will be served by approximately ten Aruba access points, and more than 2,000 access points have already been deployed.

"We needed a mobility solution that satisfied HIPAA security requirements, one that could be scaled to support a nationwide deployment and was manageable from a central location," said John Barnett, Golden Living's Director of Network Services and Support. "We don't have full time IT staff at every facility, so from our Fort Smith data center we wanted to configure, diagnose, update, and monitor every location. Ease of management was a major factor in our selection of Aruba, and the nationwide system is centrally managed. Aruba provides us with a secure way to manage every location as if we were on-site, freeing our staff to focus on enhancing the residents' experience."

Aruba's network reliably and securely delivers medication information to Golden Living staff members, who can quickly verify and record medication regimes, dosages, and deliveries. Through the use of adaptive wireless LAN technology and identity-based security, Aruba securely and reliably brings the enterprise network to staff members wherever they roam. The network automatically adapts to the changing local environment, ensuring reliable operation in different building designs, the presence of RF-based medical devices, and nearby Wi-Fi networks.

"Aruba offers a compelling solution for this market because we combine a scalable architecture with identity-based security and an easy-to-use centralized management system," said Peter Mongroo, Aruba's head of healthcare marketing. "Golden Living is leveraging all of these features, and doing so on a huge scale. Our application-aware networks optimize themselves to changing requirements, and in so doing lower operating expenses by freeing IT staff from mundane network management tasks. Healthcare and nursing facilities worldwide turn to Aruba for secure data, voice, video, and biomedical wireless networks, and we're delighted to welcome Golden Living as a valued member of our fast-growing user community."

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