SWOTT

SWOT ANALYSIS Name: Grade Course: Tutor’s Name: (28, October, 2010) SWOT Analysis Introduction A SWOT Analysis is a tool that is used in strategic planning to assist the organization in identifying its internal and external environment by analyzing its Strengths (S), weaknesses (W), opportunities, (O), and threats (T) (Dyson, 2003). Strengths and weaknesses are internal while opportunities and threats are external. This analysis helps the organization in planning on how to stay competitive. This paper will provide a detailed SWOT analysis for Medhelp Data Backup Services Company. Medhelp Data Backup Services Company was established fifteen years ago. The company, which is based in New York, specializes in providing data backup services to its clientele. The clientele is mainly composed of small and medium sized medical and dental hospitals and clinics based in New York City and its environs. For these clients, it would be unreasonably expensive to invest in the IT technology that is required to ensure that their data is frequently backed up. With its resourceful expertise in IT technology, Medhelp Data Services identified the opportunity and decided to specialize on providing medical data backup services for these clients. External forces and trends considerations: Legal and regulatory There are legal and regulatory requirements in regard to how medical care providers should store and manage their data. The most popular of this is the Health Insurance and Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPPA) (Centres for Medicare and Medic Aid Services, 2010). As a specialized medical data backup services provider, Medhelp ensures that its clients’ data storage and maintenance is compliant to this Act. HIPPA compliance includes ensuring that patients’ personal data remains private and secure as is contained in the Private Health Information (PHI) rule. This rule provides regulations on who should have access to private data and information that is collected by medical care givers in the course of their work. To comply with this rule, Medhelp ensures that data is encrypted while it is being stored in the remote backup servers and even during its transmission through the network. The Data is also uploaded through a Secure Socket Layer. Apart from the data being encrypted, there are access control policies on who should access data that is stored on behalf of the clients. Clients are advised to limit the number of people authorized to access their information to a bear minimum. The Medhelp server rooms where the PHI data is stored are heavily secured locked and only accessible by authorized personnel with key cards. There is reliable surveillance. Because of its expertise and specialization in medical data services, this is an opportunity for Medhelp to assist more clients in complying with these regulations which most health providers may consider complicated. The weakness and primary threat in complying HIPPA is found while the data has to be transported through hard drives such as CD/tape as this data can end up in the wrong hands. The only time when storage is in form of DVD/CD/tape is during the initial transfer of data and only when the client’s internet speed is too low to transfer heavy data. Any additional dat...