Case study

Innovation at the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine

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Founded

2016

‍Company size

125 faculty

Industry

Higher Education

Personalized Homepage

Provide faculty and staff with a personalized homepage with the applications and resources they need based on their role

Preceptor Access

Extend access to preceptors who need occasional access

Data Protection

Apply data protection rules to protect sensitive and confidential data while maintaining regulation compliance

Usage Audit

Audit application usage and data movements

Seamless Integration

Securely shuttle data between SaaS applications without downloading anything to the endpoint.

Universal Access

Provide faculty and staff secure access from anywhere, using any network.

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Meet ICOM

The Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine (ICOM) was established in 2016 as the first medical school in the state. Located at the Meridian campus of Idaho State University, ICOM aims to improve access to high quality healthcare in Idaho and other underserved regions. Recent data from the Association of American Medical Colleges ranks Idaho 50th in the nation for the number of active physicians per capita. ICOM’s 162 students per class will make a meaningful difference for the residents in the state.

The ICOM Values

Student dedication - ICOM is committed to student success by nurturing a respectful, challenging, collaborative, and diverse environment that promotes critical thinking and instills a passion for active, life-long learning toward skillful and competent medical practice.
Collaboration - ICOM fosters a community of collaboration through efficient and transparent communication, compassion, mutual respect, integrity, and trust in a safe and encouraging environment that embraces individuality, inclusion, and diversity.
Osteopathic identity - The tenets of osteopathy are embodied in the ICOM culture with a unified connection of mind, body, and spirit in our considerations of self-care, work-life balance, educational pursuits, and community engagement.
Professionalism - As ICOM ambassadors, our interactions demonstrate professionalism through our words and actions which encompass empathy, compassion, cultural competence, respect, diversity, integrity, and accountability.
Excellence - ICOM pursues excellence through its commitment to its mission and values as mindful stewards of our constituents, curriculum, finances, culture, and community partners.

Learn more at ICOM

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THE CHALlENGE

Operating the College of Medicine on SaaS

The founding directors of ICOM set out with a vision for the role of technology in teaching and learning. They took full advantage of their opportunity to design the school around modern technology practices, including SaaS applications and 100% Apple devices for students and faculty. ICOM is an Apple Distinguished School, one of only 47 higher education institutions in the U.S. with this distinction. “Apple Distinguished School leaders, faculty, and the extended community have a clear vision for how their technology-rich environments support learning goals. School leaders have established elements for continuous innovation.” Source: Apple.com This approach helped ICOM avoid the capital and operational expenses of building and maintaining a datacenter full of traditional server infrastructure. Students and faculty benefit from seamless access to learning resources and applications, whether on-campus or off. As a medical school, ICOM is responsible for strict adherence to cybersecurity practices and regulatory compliance to protect sensitive data. This includes the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that covers patient records, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) that covers education records, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) that covers financial records, among others. To fulfill the requirements of robust data protections, compliance standards, and frictionless digital access, ICOM adopted Island, the Enterprise Browser.

The Solution

The Enterprise Browser as Application Delivery Platform

Using Island gives faculty and staff quick and convenient access to all the learning and teaching resources they need with a familiar browser interface. At the same time, it equips the ICOM technology team with the controls and data protections they need to ensure sensitive applications and data are protected.

Brian Atkinson, Chief Information Officer at ICOM, first learned about Island at an industry conference and immediately saw the potential. Unlike the other technology solutions he was exploring, Island requires zero on-premises infrastructure and natively supports Apple devices. At the time, he remarked to a colleague, “this does exactly what we've been imagining in our heads!”

The real test for Island was how it would be received by the faculty and staff. After introducing the Enterprise Browser and explaining the value it would bring to ICOM, the results were positive. Around 85% of ICOM faculty were already using Chrome, so switching to the Chromium-based Island Enterprise Browser was an easy transition with essentially zero learning curve.

Island creates a secure, frictionless workspace for faculty and staff. Whether on-campus or off, faculty can access the applications and resources they need, simply by opening the Island browser.

“Island gives them the flexibility to be able to access data safely, whether they’re working from the clinic, or they’re here on campus, or they’re working from home. It’s really powerful.”

Brian Atkinson, CIO

What About Privacy?

Some faculty were understandably concerned about their privacy while using Island. The platform that has the capability to record every website and user action, so they wanted to know how it would be used. According to Brian, “one of the great parts about Island is that the policies that we can write are super granular, so we can track the data that we have compliance requirements on, but the rest of it can be anonymous, and we don't need to be restricting users needlessly.”

An advantage of the Enterprise Browser approach is that policies are defined in the cloud (through the Island Management Console) but applied locally in the browser. When users visit an application or page with enhanced auditing policies, their activity is logged. If the same user navigates to a personal destination outside of the scope of policy enforcement, that activity is anonymized.

Conclusion

The Future Is in the Browser

Within the first year of its Enterprise Browser journey,the University of the Pacific used Island to address severalkey challenges:

Protect sensitive data and secure access to critical applications
Demonstrate compliance with regulatory frameworks
Further the educational mission with technology
Implement a zero-trust architecture

And they’re just getting started. Mo Balakrishnan, Director ofInformation Security, calls Island “the operating system of the future.” Island’s flexible and dynamic platform can address opportunities they encounter in the future, all delivered in a user experience optimized for end-user productivity.

Innovation at the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine

Meet ICOM

Operating the College of Medicine on SaaS

The Enterprise Browser as Application Delivery Platform

What About Privacy?

The Future Is in the Browser

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