Splunk has started a collaboration with NewYork-Presbyterian, a health organization in New York. The two organisations are going to develop an analytical tool together to prevent medication from getting into the wrong hands, reports MedCity News.
NewYork-Presbyterian currently uses Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Enterprise Secuity, which are two security solutions. The organization realized that the same ideas could be used to create a tool to monitor medication.
Splunk’s dedicated platform – the controlled substance monitoring platform – will enable NewYork-Presbyterian to track data from electronic health data, dispensing systems of pharmacies and the Electronic Prescription of Controlled Substances platform.
This allows the system to see if medication may be issued for illegal purposes. Think, for example, of a doctor who prescribes medication for a patient who is not in hospital at all. In addition, the solution can help protect against writing out expensive medication for inappropriate purposes.
Leading role
“At a time when overdose deaths across the country and in New York City are at a crisis level – especially due to the opioid epidemic – health workers have a responsibility to protect themselves from possible drug abuse,” said Jennings Aske, senior vice president and chief information security officer at NewYork-Presbyterian.
“NewYork-Presbyterian takes a leading role in protecting the public by establishing very effective controls to prevent the illegal use of controlled substances. In the end, we hope that other hospitals will also benefit from the new platform,” the intention is that the platform will be implemented in the organisation in the second quarter.
In addition, the two organizations are also working on an improved data analytics solution that investigates unauthorized access to patient data. The health system already has a policy to protect patient privacy, but the Splunk tool needs to add additional measures. This includes the ability to send real-time alarms when someone is viewing unauthorized information about a patient.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.