Cloud database and platform-as-a-service technology specialist Caspio is targeting the health care IT industry with the release of HIPAA Enterprise, a HIPAA-compliant edition of its rapid application development platform.
The company’s platform features a point-and-click application builder, which allows business users to create custom cloud applications without any coding. Potential application examples include online patient portals, health insurance exchanges, clinical trial databases and knowledge sharing.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 sets the security and compliance requirements for all organizations, including technology vendors like Caspio, for dealing with electronic protected health information (PHI). Any improper handling or storage of PHI data can result in huge fines up to $1.5 million for each HIPAA violation.
“Under such stringent conditions, health care organizations are understandably weary of adopting technologies such as cloud computing and platform as a service, but the surging demand for health-care reform, more efficiently, and improved patient services are driving organizations to take the leap forward,” Frank Zamani, Caspio founder and CEO, told eWEEK.
According to IDC’s latest CloudTrack Survey, more than 50 percent of health care organizations indicate that they will be piloting, using or managing some form of cloud as part of their IT infrastructure in 2014.
To deliver HIPAA compliance, Caspio upgraded its PaaS offering with specific technology, policies and procedures that keep electronic protected health information (PHI) in compliance with regulations.
“Our customers appreciate the fact that Caspio HIPAA Enterprise is an all-in-one solution that provides everything they need to launch compliant applications fast–the compliant infrastructure, rapid application development framework, database security, ongoing maintenance, and all the operational policies and procedures that protect PHI data,” Zamani said.
All HIPAA customer accounts reside on a separate infrastructure dedicated to HIPAA-compliant applications running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and all data is encrypted during transit and while at rest within the database, while systemwide audit logs record all user access to data and are encrypted in a separate environment.
“We’ve seen growing demand for HIPAA-compliant solutions first-hand in the last year and we think it will continue to grow because the health care industry is widely underserved by cloud solutions,” Zamaini said. “We are already seeing a lot of interest from our existing customer base.”
Zamani also noted all Caspio product enhancements will be applicable to this edition, so users will be able to create richer and more robust applications with every new release.
Florida Healthcare Plus, a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) that provides patient care services for customers across the state of Florida, recently automated its entire Medicare and Medicaid enrollment process using applications developed on Caspio’s HIPAA-compliant platform.
In addition, Caspio maintains a business associate agreement (BAA) with its vendors and offers a BAA to its customers, partners and affiliates developing on the platform.