Cleveland Clinic Health System Uses Sentillion for HIPAA Compliance

Nov. 2, 2004
Sentillion to provide Indetix biometric technology to secure pharmaceuticals at Ohio healthcare provider

Sentillion, Inc., the leading provider of identity and access management solutions to the healthcare industry, announced today that it has begun working with the Cleveland Clinic Health System - East Region in its efforts to achieve compliance with the Ohio State Board of Pharmacy Positive Identification regulations. The Ohio State Board of Pharmacy requires all organizations that use computerized pharmacy and medication ordering applications to comply with the positive identification regulations.

Cleveland Clinic Health System -- East will use BioLogon authentication software from Identix Corporation, to positively identify Cleveland Clinic Health System -- East users of the Eclipsys SCM application. The use of biometric fingerprint readers will ensure that any individual involved in dispensing, administering or prescribing drugs is securely authenticated to the CPOE system. Sentillion is healthcare's master distributor of Identix BioLogon biometric devices and a preferential supplier of Identix fingerprint technology.

"Sentillion's strong authentication products provide the Cleveland Clinic Health System -- East with a solution that will address the authentication requirement set forth by the Ohio State Board of Pharmacy," said Susan Kraus, project manager at Cleveland Clinic Health System -- East. "The use of biometrics for authentication provides us with strong levels of security and improved accessibility to our systems for authorized users. We look forward to continuing our roll-out of the biometrics technology throughout our facilities in the coming months."

The Ohio State Board of Pharmacy requires strong authentication for electronic access to Order Entry and Pharmacy related applications. After concluding that passwords, traditionally used to authenticate a user's identity, were insufficient, the Ohio State Board of Pharmacy issued new regulations that require computer-based positive identification. Under these new regulations, healthcare organizations must have a system that can determine positive identification for all professionals involved in medication-related procedures.

Also of note, in August 2004, Sentillion announced that University Hospitals Health System (UHHS) would be using its Vergence solution for strong authentication and single sign-on in combination with Ensure Technologies' proximity technology, XyLoc MD, to positively identify UHHS users of the Eclipsys E7000 Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) application. Sentillion is a distributor of the XyLoc solution to the healthcare market.

Sentillion's Vergence product was designed specifically to meet the productivity, privacy and security needs of hospitals, medical centers and healthcare providers. Vergence enables user provisioning, enterprise single sign-on, strong authentication including password, biometrics and proximity technologies, context management and privacy auditing across any clinical and non-clinical applications.