4 Network Automation Use Cases in Healthcare

When healthcare IT infrastructure goes down, whether due to a cyber attack, human error, or a natural disaster, the financial impact is significant. Just one day of downtime can cost millions, including lost revenue, inefficiencies in operations, and potential regulatory fines. As the duration of downtime increases, so do the costs.

Beyond the financial impact, there are also human costs. Hospitals may have to cancel or delay treatments, redirect emergency services to other locations, or revert to using pen and paper to track requisitions and lab results and hand-deliver information between floors. Patient trust erodes and healthcare worker burnout worsens.

Network engineers are crucial to the heroic efforts needed to restore availability and uptime. In reality, they must ensure healthcare organizations stay operational every day. Without the right tools, the process becomes chaotic and puts healthcare organizations at risk.

A Prescription for a Healthier Future

Network automation in healthcare transforms operations, enhances security, and improves patient care by efficiently managing complex IT environments that must run 24/7. It ensures that Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and IoT medical devices are accessible at all times, streamlining data sharing and enabling smart hospital operations. It also enables AI adoption by providing a single source of truth for real-time visibility into network infrastructure, and integrating workflows to leverage AI effectively and reliably.

Reducing manual tasks streamlines IT workflows and allows healthcare professionals to concentrate on ongoing patient care. Adopting network automation is a valuable step toward a healthier future. Here are key use cases healthcare organizations are leveraging to advance along that path.

1. Device Provisioning and Configuration: Streamline the setup of network switches, access points, and devices, reducing deployment time from weeks to minutes, and minimizing human errors for a more efficient process.

Network automation begins with a detailed device inventory, including manufacturer, type, model number, firmware, and software version. Having a single trusted source of truth is crucial for monitoring the status of backups, configurations, updates, patches, and end-of-life devices.

BackBox gathers information about your network devices and builds and maintains your device inventory. New devices are automatically added during onboarding, and updates to existing device data happen in real time. When devices are provisioned, BackBox automatically ensures configurations meet company policies and creates a backup so a working copy exists from the start.

2. Network Resiliency and High Availability: Implement automated backups and vulnerability intelligence to help ensure uptime for critical patient care systems.

The BackBox platform makes it easy to reliably back up network and security devices from over 180 vendors with a single tool, minimizing errors. Schedule backups nightly and Backbox ensures reliability by validating each backup through a five-step process, notifying administrators of any potential backup failure that may need investigation. Restores are initiated with a single click, saving time during a crisis.

Current backups are an essential part of good cyber hygiene and support keeping devices in a known and trusted state. That’s where BackBox vulnerability intelligence comes into play, identifying and analyzing new vulnerabilities and exploits that cybercriminals might use, thus helping to mitigate risk. The platform correlates known vulnerabilities with your inventory of network and security devices, prioritizes these vulnerabilities based on risk and security posture, and provides options to automate updates or apply configuration workarounds.

3. Network Security and Compliance: Strengthen IoT device security and ensure compliance with regulations like HIPAA and DORA by using automated audit trails and conducting comprehensive configuration audits.

Most device vendor software lacks support for configuration compliance management, leaving your network vulnerable. BackBox accelerates compliance processes by providing automation templates that specify your compliance requirements for all devices and your workflows for audits and drift remediation.

Automated compliance checks verify device configurations against organizational standards and industry best practices like HIPAA, DORA, CIS, and NIST policies. You can generate reports showing the level of compliance and remediate discrepancies that could put your organization at risk. A centralized platform that maintains trail logs makes it easy to compare device configuration and inventory reports over different dates, helping track changes and streamline audits.

4. Automated Troubleshooting and Monitoring: Quickly identify network bottlenecks, troubleshoot Electronic Medical Records (EMR) issues, and provide real-time performance insights that work together to significantly reduce Mean Time to Repair (MTTR).

BackBox maintains trail logs of activities for all devices and device groups so teams can see a history of what was done, by whom, and when. Teams can also run network health checks to quickly spot potential problems of deviations from normal settings and stay ahead of issues.

In case of performance issues, these details are accessible with just a few clicks, making troubleshooting easier and accelerating response times. Devices can be integrated with your ITSM, such as ServiceNow, for better discovery and closed-loop ticketing and resolution.

These automation use cases help healthcare IT and security transition from reactive support and troubleshooting to proactive management and network cyber resilience. Healthcare organizations see value through reduced downtime and consistent high-quality care while reducing operational costs.

Network automation is truly the antidote for increasing infrastructure risk that healthcare organizations face. Discover how to incorporate it into your strategy. Check out a quick demo of the BackBox platform or reach out to a BackBox expert to request a customized demo and see our solution in action.