Managing Sensitive Health Data in the Public Cloud

When two healthcare IT veterans realized that a whopping 32 percent of all prescriptions called into pharmacies don't get picked up, they decided to do something about it and founded a business to help close the gap. Their company, ScriptDrop contracts directly with pharmaceutical companies to deliver medications right to the patient’s home, at no cost to the patient or to the pharmacy.

The company is driven by technology that’s easy to use for pharmacies and providers. Early on, ScriptDrop got up and running on Amazon Web Services, leveraging the power of the cloud to focus on growing their business rather than managing infrastructure. But, as their business needs grew, the IT team at ScriptDrop realized they were in over their heads and turned to a managed services provider.

ScriptDrop never had its own data center. Based on their previous experiences in healthcare IT, the founders decided early on to use the cloud. But running AWS became more complex as the company grew.

Not so simple

The founders looked to independent consultants to help them with the day-to-day tasks of managing security-sensitive, high-performance cloud infrastructure. “When we chose AWS, we naively assumed that it was going to be like ‘click, click, deploy’ and everything would be up and running,” recalls Larry Scott, CTO of ScriptDrop.

With a business driven by protected health information and all of the privacy and security requirements around housing and transmitting sensitive data, the main concern running on a public cloud was security. “The number one thing is security, because if we were to have a data leak or a data breach, it would ultimately lead us to shut our doors,” Scott says.

A breach could put ScriptDrop at risk for bad press, loss of customer trust and even large fines from regulatory bodies if it were found to be out of compliance. The company also sought a higher level of support to help it grow and optimize its environment.

Finding the optimal solution

Realizing they needed help and after evaluating several major cloud providers, ScriptDrop approached Rackspace. They needed help from skilled experts to design an optimal solution that addressed security, privacy and compliance — key issues for any healthcare company. “We were impressed by the level of support with the Aviator package, and after seeing the price, it was definitely a no-brainer for us,” Scott says.

Partnering with Rackspace, ScriptDrop was able to launch quickly. “If we had to do it ourselves, I can’t even calculate how much time it would take to learn all of that. Just getting stuff set up for the VPN was cumbersome for us,” he says. “We can count on them, and they’re proactive too. So, if there’s an emergency, we’re covered. It’s perfect all the way around for us at the size we’re at and in the direction that we’re moving.”

To read more about Rackspace’s Aviator managed service for AWS, go to https://www.rackspace.com/managed-aws/features.