Enable Secure Healthcare Innovations with F5 and Azure

Healthcare providers are leveraging technology to create additional care options for patients, such as in-home monitoring. It’s projected that by 2025, 40% of American healthcare providers will shift 20% of their hospital beds to patient homes, driven by AI services and remote patient monitoring platforms that enable diagnosis and treatment to be delivered virtually.² Technology-enabled in-home care delivers a convenient option for patients and expands potential revenue streams for providers.

Azure can play a vital role in the building, operating, and managing of innovative patient care services. Azure IoT can securely connect in-home devices to the cloud, while Azure Synapse Analytics enables providers to store, process, analyze, and visualize potential treatment protocols for in-home patients. F5 BIG-IP ensures that the Azure applications responsible for in-home patient care are available and secure, with traffic management and performance optimization.

Many patients use digital solutions to help improve their health and make getting care more efficient. Supply is booming, as over 350,000 health applications are available in the market.³ Patient portals are a popular healthcare application that empowers patients to schedule appointments, communicate with providers, and track and interact with their sensitive health information. Two-thirds of surveyed consumers used patient portals in 2022.⁴

Incorporating Azure solutions into healthcare applications can provide immense benefits to providers and patients. For instance, Azure Stack enables providers to build and run hybrid applications across facilities, data centers, and the cloud, while Azure Healthcare APIs enable the secure exchange of sensitive patient health information across provider infrastructure. F5 can enhance those benefits and help ensure that healthcare providers remain HIPAA compliant with F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM), which enables secure and simplified centralized patient authentication to the Azure applications they rely upon.

Healthcare organizations provide life-extending and life-saving care, but they are a favorite target for malicious actors due to the value of protected health information. Because the industry relies heavily upon technology, vulnerabilities abound for cybercriminals to gain access to healthcare provider networks and systems and wreak havoc, with potentially catastrophic consequences. In 2022, the FBI received 210 reports of ransomware attacks targeting healthcare and public health organizations, by far the most of any of the 16 critical infrastructure components the Bureau tracked.⁵

Facing ever-present and evolving threats, healthcare companies should consider increasing the security protocols for all mission-critical Azure applications. F5 BIG-IP Advanced Web Application Firewall (WAF) protects against the most prevalent attacks against Azure applications and services. F5 solutions are deployed at the majority of top U.S. hospitals and mitigate over a billion automated attacks per day.

F5 enables healthcare companies to provide effective and timely patient care, today and in the future, by enhancing the performance and security of their Azure applications and services. F5 solutions enable healthcare companies to meet growing service demands by expanding capacity, improving patient knowledge and experience, and safeguarding operations against attacks.

Available in the Azure Marketplace, F5 solutions are easy to integrate, operate, and manage within existing healthcare infrastructure. F5 delivers faster time to value with flexible consumption models so healthcare providers can deliver exceptional care.

To learn more, visit: https://www.f5.com/products/big-ip-services