Some Windows XP Users Can't Afford To Upgrade

Special dental application to track intervention history, show X-rays associated, etc should not communicate with the internet.

See this is just plain nonsense.

I'm working with these sorts of customers, and the bottom line is that air-gapping the internal network is absurd. They need things like internet access and email in the various exam rooms at the front desk, in their offices etc. They also need to be able to review exam data in many of these places.

For example, the front receptionist needs to be able to send and receive email, send out email reminders, email invoices, track shipments online, and other stuff like that. So that computer needs to be online. But they also need to be able to access the patient management system, pull up patient history for invoicing, etc.

The patient management system is also tied into the medical equipment, as many instruments will submit the captured exams to the patient management system via DICOM and so forth. So that computer also needs to be on the so-called "internal network".

You want support for a medical instrument / software -- you can't even theoretically take that to futureshop's geeksquad to sort out... but remote support via teamviewer/gotomypc/etc now saves shipping expensive equipment around or flying expensive technicians around in many cases. The equipment has to be online for that. Nevermind that they usually outsource IT because they're pretty small shops that can't support in-house IT, and remote admin / support for routine maintenance is a lot cheaper than onsite.

Meanwhile doctors want to be able to send exams to partners, manufacturers, consultants, and so forth. Doctors want to back up the data to the cloud. Two computers at every desk, separate networks, and moving the data across an airgap each time would be a major hassle and expense.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The software itself has started moving towards cloud storage and cloud backup integration, and there are even patient management systems now that are SaaS. The new and the old collide... people are using 10 year old instruments with new practice management systems and a lot of the new stuff available either outright has to be online, or at best you lose a lot of functionality if it is not.

I don't see such a problem here.

That's because you obviously haven't tried to solve it for a real practice in the real world.

Special dental application to track intervention history, show X-rays associated, etc should not communicate with the internet.

In the real world it does. Patients like email reminders of their appointments, they like to get emailed copies of their invoices for insurance claims and so forth. Doctors routinely need to send patient records to other doctors, specialists, consultants and so forth. Things need to be backed up offsite -- and online backup is the most practical solution by far for that.

Many doctors work in mutiple practices, Tuesdays here, Thursday's there... and they want to be able to review and analyze on patients cross-sites so the in some cases mutiple offices are linked via VPNs etc.

Nobody today would tolerate having all the exams from a particular instrument available only on a single air gapped unit or even an air gapped network.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/mBiTDQlMPyc/story01.htm

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