Mashed Articles

With the immense popularity of offshore outsourcing, more and more industry sectors are adopting it as an inherent strategical function. One of the major industries that rely on the outsourcing model is – Medical & Health Care Industry. Be it clinical research or trials or medical transcription tasks or simple data entry work thereof, offshore outsourcing has become a norm than an exception.

However, is outsourcing of medical records and patient information really safe?

Security Challenges in Medical Data Entry Outsourcing

Security of data is one of the key challenges faced by the offshore outsourcing industry. With stories about recent cases of data leakage and misuse of information, the very concept of offshore outsourcing is under scrutiny.

Health care facilities that outsource their medical data entry works have absolutely no idea as to who is actually doing their work. There are cases wherein the outsourcing service provider sub-contracts the work to smaller companies and thereby lose control over the end transcriber. This can result into serious consequences for the client.

What Needs To Be Done?

To cut a long story short, everything depends upon your choice of service provider. In order to avoid any such mis-happenings, you need to ensure that, while outsourcing the medical data entry tasks, you choose an ethical and professional service provider. This can be done by checking his track record with other companies. Here are some things you need to look out for:

No Use of Sub Contractors
Choose a service provider that does not use sub contractors for executing the work. In addition you need to be diligent and keep monitoring the progress of the service provider throughout the project. Another important thing you need to ensure is to draft a professional contract that contains a clear “no sub contractor clause” within it.

Prioritize Customer Services
You need to make sure that your service provider should prioritize their customers’ needs in the best and all the work that you outsource to them is taken care of by their own team of trained professionals.

Secure Physical Location
If possible, visit your service provider’s company to check out their security arrangements. A professional service provider would have manned security at entry and exit points, surveillance cameras, not allow any removable storage devices and have only limited access of systems and information on a need to know basis.

Ensures Complete Data Security
In addition to ensuring that your data doesn’t leave the premises of the company, your service provider should ensure data security by incorporating security measures like data encryption protocols, multi-tiered application architecture, design level security, safeguards, firewall protected networks, sterilized e-mail servers, denial of access procedure and multi model alerts. It’s always advisable to go for the vendor which not only uses the latest state of technology for your work but also has trained personal to handle such software with firmness and accuracy.

Expert Data Entry Professionals
Medical data entry is a great deal different from regular data entry jobs. It requires a strong medical background and effective knowledge of clinical research and trials. Moreover, you need to ensure that the people working on your data are educated on the importance of being HIPAA and HITECH compliant. Also for better results in specific types of data entry tasks, it might be preferred that before initiating a project some customized training pertaining the nature of the project is provided to the team appointed to be dealing with that project. Such trainings can be given jointly by the two outsourcing partners.

The above points act as the checklist for verifying and finalizing the service provider before signing the deal with him. Also the terms of contract should be designed in a manner to cover the data security and confidentiality clause as well apart from the legal and financial terms. Even a penalty clause and a risk management plan should be well discussed between the two partners to be able to properly handle the negative effects in case of any leakage of information/data or breach of any terms of contract.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
Pooja Puri is a Health Care industry professional with a Masters degree in Clinical Research. She is associated with a Clinical Research Organization located in New Delhi. She writes articles for KPO firm that has expertise in providing data mining and data entry for clinical trial work to major pharmaceutical companies.

Writen by Ken Marlborough

The DDR SDRAM or double-data-rate synchronous dynamic random access memory, offers greater bandwidth than ordinary SDRAM. It is a type of memory-integrated circuit used in computers that transfers data on both the rising and falling edges of the clock signal. Highly efficient, it nearly doubles the transfer rate, while maintaining the frequency of the front side bus.

For example, if data is transferred 8 bytes at a time the DDR RAM transfer rate could be calculated as (memory bus clock rate) × 2 (for dual rate) × 8 (number of bytes transferred). This means with a bus frequency of 100 MHz, DDR-SDRAM gives a maximum transfer rate of 1600 MB/s. DDR Memory has 184 pins and one notch. The DDR operates at a voltage of 2.5V.

The DDR SDRAM package sizes and the standards of speed have been set by JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council). There are two sets of specifications: one for memory chips and the other for memory modules.

There are no architectural differences between DDR SDRAM designed for different clock frequencies. The number just indicates the speed that the chip is guaranteed to run at. When you run DDR SDRAM at lower speeds than specified, it is called underclocking. Running it at higher speeds is known as overclocking. Overclocking should be tried only by pros who know what they are doing, and only on high-quality memory.

To double or even quadruple actual bandwidth, some new chipsets use these memory types in dual or even quad channel configurations. With the dual-channel configuration, a matched pair of memory modules should be used for full efficiency.

The new-gen DDR-2 with a few alterations, allows higher clock frequency and is fast replacing the DDR. It also faces competition from the Rambus XDR-DRAM. Other options like QDR (Quad Data Rate) are too complex to implement, while XDR offers no support. Today the DDR-2 is set to become the standard.

Writen by Ken Marlborough

RAM, or ‘random access memory,’ can be defined as a type of memory where the data is stored in a computer and can be accessed randomly in contrast to other electronic data that has to be accessed in a fixed order. A videocassette or tape can only be accessed in a fixed arrangement according to the revolutions of the electromagnetic tape. RAM can also be defined as a type of memory that is not sequential in nature and can be accessed in any manner, even while the computer is on.

All the storage locations in RAM are equally accessible at the same time. However, there is another type of memory called ROM, or ‘read only memory,’ which is also randomly accessible but can only be read and not changed. This is not true with RAM since it can be accessed and changed to suit the requirements of the user.

Another important feature of RAM is that accessibility does not affect the speed of the system itself. Random access memory is the amount of data that the computer can process and store temporarily. It can be lost if the power is turned off before saving the data to the hard drive. There are two types of RAM, namely static RAM and dynamic RAM. Dynamic RAM is the most common type of RAM in the market and is widely used.

The dynamic RAM chip is made up of a millions of tiny capacitors and transistors that have small bits of data stored in them. The memory controller automatically refreshes this RAM constantly so that the information in the capacitor is not lost. The capacitor, which acts as storage area for information, has a permanent leak, thus the need for continuous refreshment and, consequently, this is how it earns the name ‘dynamic.’ Static RAM is another type of memory that uses completely different technology and does not need constant refreshing.

RAM differs according to its type, make, advancements, and upgrades as and when they occur, but the basic definition mentioned above remains the same.