A just-published Cisco study estimates that nearly 89 percent of healthcare workers Bring Their Own Device–in this case, smartphones only, so really BYOS. For employers who largely do not subsidize usage, it’s a huge benefit–overall in the eight industries studied, 90 percent of employees receive no subsidy yet 92 percent use their smartphone for work weekly. But the employees don’t bring their own good security practices. In healthcare alone (classed as a ‘sensitive industry’): 41 percent do not password protect, 53 percent access unknown/unsecured Wi-Fi networks and 52 percent don’t disable Bluetooth ‘discoverable’ mode. And this does not include iPads, Android tablets and the like which are also often left unsecured. According to FierceMobileHealthcare, which referenced a late 2012 Amcom Software study, “more than 65 percent of responding healthcare facilities do not have a documented mobility strategy in place. What’s more, 37 percent of the survey’s respondents do not have plans to implement such a strategy in their organizations.” It makes one long for the days of IT department-issued cranky CrackBerries. BYOD Insights 2013: A Cisco Partner Network Study Hat tip to David Albert, MD of AliveCor @DrDave01 for the link via Twitter.
Is there a BYOD backlash? Ken Congdon of Healthcare Technology News spoke at HIMSS 2013 on the unstoppability of BYOD and counters the naysayers.
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