Ask the Expert

Nuesoft Xpress is pleased to bring you this segment of e-Nues, where our staff experts answer your questions about student health challenges that can be addressed through a technology solution.

Shahram Famorzadeh, PhD, is the Chief Technology Officer at Nuesoft Technologies. View his response below to the question submitted by one of our readers.

Question:  We are a small health center and are ready to purchase a practice management system. We have been researching options and prefer an application service provider (ASP) model, but our campus Information Technology staff has expressed concern about having a vendor store our students’ health records off site. We will not be able to buy a system until IT gives the green light to Administration. How can we help our school’s IT team feel more comfortable about an ASP model?
    --Submitted by a health center director and e-Nues reader in Florida

Answer: 
Your IT Department’s reservations are understandable, especially considering the recent data security breaches at several major universities. However, the reality is that ASP technology ― now commonly known as “Software as a Service” technology – is becoming the norm rather than the exception.

Benefits of the SaaS model to your IT department include :

• SaaS systems require less work for your IT staff. The software vendor updates the software and manages its performance daily;
• SaaS systems are often more affordable, because costs are spread over a number of clients; and
• SaaS systems actually offer more security than campus-hosted systems. This is primarily because most colleges and university IT departments do not have the budget to compete with the infrastructure offered by SaaS vendors. For example, Nuesoft Xpress houses our clients’ patient data at multiple premium data centers. We use state-of-the-art server configurations, and we have developed extremely robust redundancy and back-up processes to keep our customers’ data secure every minute of every day.

For more information about the five layers of security that Nuesoft uses to keep our clients’ data safe, visit the Nuesoft Xpress Web site at: http://www.nuesoftxpress.com/why_xpress/security.html