Monitoring your Chromebooks School System Edition

Monitoring your Chromebooks School System Edition

by Theresa Miller, Citrix CTP & Microsoft MVP
Major vendors have been doubling down on their investment in Chromebooks, and that effort has paid off — they’ve consistently seen strong returns thanks to the platform’s wide adoption globally. Source (2021).  Additionally, as we consider school system adoption for students and educators being a common use case it leaves me wondering how monitoring of these devices is being prioritized considering they are extremely mobile, going home with students and educators daily to complete and/or grade assignments at home.  Today let’s take a closer look at Chromebook use within schools, break down the challenges that come with that for device monitoring, and review some best practices for monitoring.

What is the challenge, really?

As a parent with students at home that use Chromebooks for their homework, I see the potential misuse that can happen.  Students were raised in a digital age, and they want to use these devices for everything.  So not only are they portable and can end up anywhere; they contain sensitive information such as schoolwork, teacher names, and more.  They need to be monitored for performance, but also security vulnerabilities that may loom in this heightened threat landscape that enterprise’s function in.  Unraveling the layers shows that monitoring these devices is business critical.

Breaking it down

Let’s get more detailed now on the challenges and why it really matters, breaking down further where the value of Chromebook monitoring becomes a must have.

  • Student risk – The internet puts students at larger risk for exposure to inappropriate content. With their desire to try to use the devices for everything, monitoring content and appropriate blocking must happen and be implemented to protect the students.
  • Device performance – These devices, while they typically come with a lower compute and lower cost option, still require performance monitoring. Making sure the system speed is optimal will ensure students can get their work done without distraction and in a timely manner.
  • Education as an enterprise – Sometimes when we think about the education system, we forget that it is a business just like any other. Appropriate device and security monitoring should be an implementation standard.

For all these reasons, we need to ensure that device monitoring be implemented and leveraged to understand what is going on with these education system devices.  Now let’s dive into some monitoring best practices.

Monitoring Chromebooks best practices checklist

Understanding what to monitor matters to ensure that the information you are reviewing is accurate and relevant to business success.  Here is my checklist:

  • Performance monitoring: Be sure to implement monitoring that will ensure that your hardware is working in a top-notch fashion.
  • Security and Software policies: Security and risk come in a couple different ways. Protecting the student from the things they shouldn’t be able to access, while also ensuring that the latest viruses, malware, and security threats do not impact the device or teacher/student data.  Proper software deployment is critical to ensuring devices are secure and safe.
  • Device Management: Make sure all Chromebooks are registered with a mobile device management system to ensure they follow your security standards and software policies.  This should also allow you to reset a device should it be stolen or lost.

Getting these three critical best practice layers in place will ensure a stable and safe Chromebook deployment.

Concluding thoughts

Chromebooks in education are the common deployment choice for these enterprises due to being a low-cost option that is simple for students to use.  Today we took a closer look at the common challenges, dove into the best practices around management, and proved that monitoring is not optional – it is a necessity.

 

Goliath Technologies has industry-only software that allows you to monitor ChromeOS devices and resolve end-user experience issues efficiently & effectively. Learn more here.

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How Intermountain Health Increased Clinician Satisfaction with Citrix & Cerner Millennium

How We Did IT

How Intermountain Health Increased Clinician Satisfaction with Citrix & Cerner Millenium

 

How Intermountain Health Increased Clinician Satisfaction with Citrix & Cerner Millennium

Infrastructure

Cerner Millenium

 

Challenge

Intermountain Health uses Goliath Technologies’ solution to identify reliability and response time issues in their organization and monitor those issues to improve the end-user EHR experience.

 

Solution

Program Goals

  • Monitor EHR performance to help identify issues that are impacting end users in
    real time

Organizational Outcomes

  • 26% increase in agreement that the EHR is reliable
  • 22% increase in agreement that the EHR has a fast system response time

Keys to Success

  • The use of Goliath Technologies’ solution to constantly monitor difficult-to-find but easy-to-fix reliability and speed issues with the EHR

 

Results

What Intermountain Health and Goliath Technologies Did

Intermountain Health experienced a 26% jump in agreement that their EHR is reliable between their first measurement in June of 2019 and their second measurement in November of 2020. They also experienced a 22% increase in agreement that their EHR has a fast system response time, a 15% increase in agreement that their EHR vendor (Oracle) delivers well, and an 8% increase in agreement that their organization/IT delivers well.

Goliath Technologies can help healthcare organizations by providing software that will isolate and solve performance issues that impact EHR satisfaction. These identified issues are typically easy to fix but very difficult to find without added technology. Goliath also provides this software with a total cost of ownership that considers the financial constraints that many healthcare organizations face.
Intermountain started their journey with Goliath in March of 2019 after identifying their need to improve their overall EHR performance.

Intermountain needed to have as much data as possible on their EHR system’s performance, and they needed enough granularity to see individual end-user data, so they decided to select Goliath’s solution due to how robust the solution’s data was. Goliath’s solution provides about 20–30 more data points than other solutions. Goliath provides Intermountain with dashboard views that allow them to gain a more in-depth look at EHR performance on a real-time basis, and with constant monitoring, this type of visibility allows Intermountain to catch issues right away.

Previous research has shown how an EHR system’s reliability and response time or speed can impact perceptions of patient safety and overall EHR satisfaction. This research also informs us that some challenges with reliability and response time are tied to bigger infrastructure issues such as computers, monitors, workstations, or other IT equipment.

Intermountain relayed one story to us about a physician in a rural Intermountain clinic in Utah. This physician was complaining about issues with how her EHR was operating in the clinic. The system was taking about 20 minutes to even load up. After analyzing the physician’s data with Goliath, Intermountain noticed her connection wasn’t native to the clinic. It was coming from a different location. That location ended up being her house, where she did the majority of her charting after work. There ended up being infrastructure issues within her home network that she was able to fix.

When Intermountain first decided to use Goliath’s solution, it required a big lift from the organization due in part to the sheer size of Intermountain. It took about 18 months to get the solution’s functionality completely up and running. However, due to the effort Intermountain put in with Goliath before the go-live (Intermountain has Goliath’s gold-level support, which includes ad-hoc consulting and support), the transition was completely seamless and didn’t affect end users in any way. Intermountain and Goliath teams collaborated often during the implementation and the integration into Goliath’s enterprise data warehouse. This collaboration helped smooth out the integration process as well. Goliath’s main target during the implementation was Intermountain’s clinics as the clinics were citing more issues than other locations, mainly with internet connectivity and performance. Intermountain also use Goliath’s solution in their hospital locations. With the solution, Intermountain can monitor every Citrix connection they have through Oracle. Intermountain’s iCentra
integration technical team monitors the data, which can be seen on a dashboard and is viewable daily. Data will run in the background, and the solution will alarm the technical team when something is out of a benchmark.

In the future, Intermountain hopes Goliath can create and push live functionality to monitor single sign-on performance, as that feature is lacking now. Intermountain noted that their main takeaway from their partnership with Goliath is that issues are not always the EHR vendor’s problem, and they are not always the organization’s problem. Rather, there is a shared responsibility between the organization that has the EHR product and the vendor themselves.

 

Intermountain Health

ABOUT ORGANIZATION

Intermountain Health (IMH) is a prominent not-for-profit healthcare system serving communities in several western U.S. states. With a strong commitment to patient-centered care, the organization operates numerous hospitals and clinics, offers a wide range of medical services, and emphasizes medical research and education. Intermountain Health actively engages in community outreach and wellness initiatives, promoting the well-being of its populations. As a nonprofit healthcare system, it reinvests its resources into patient care, research, and community health programs, prioritizing the health and well-being of its patients and communities.

Headquarters location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Founded: 1975
Employees: 41 000
Industry: Healthcare