Bring-your-own-device or BYOD, is a relatively new concept, where employees of a particular organization are allowed to bring their own devices to work, in order to access privileged company information and applications. According to estimates, nearly 75% of the employees in high growth markets, like the US, are using their own devices at work.

The healthcare industry is not indifferent to this concept. Nearly 80% hospitals across the US allow physicians to use their own devices in their daily workflows. However, one of the major problems with this approach is to ensure that the devices are not misused to steal vital patient data and other sensitive information.

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The need of the hour is to manage both policy and technology, together. Adoption of technology should in fact be encouraged by providers, as it allows for better mobility and access to patient information from remote locations. However, there needs to be a uniform, practice-wide IT policy which governs how these devices are used to handle patient information.

The IT departments of hospitals need to make sure that they are equipped with the capability to track every byte of data being accessed by every single device. This will be especially helpful in tracking stolen or misused data. In addition, they need to have certain file size restrictions in order to make sure big data files are always flagged by the system, and are authorized properly. In case any device which contains sensitive information is stolen or lost, the IT department should be able to wipe off the data on it remotely.

Telehealth is a new concept opening up in the healthcare industry and it will not be entirely possible for IT departments to keep mobile devices out of the network for too long. Newer software versions of mobile devices allow for better enterprise-level security policies, and this is something, that IT departments, can use to allow for a smoother transition to the BYOD approach.