The healthcare industry is under pressure to grow and become more efficient.  As this pressure increases healthcare providers are recognizing the need to maintain records electronically.  Several policies and regulations exist that affect the handling of electronic records (HIPAA, FDA 21 CFR Part 11, JCAHO).  These policies and regulations either recommend or require that providers use computer-generated timestamps.
 

Synchronize Your Network to Ensure Accurate Timestamps

The best way to implement accurate timestamping of electronic health records is by synchronizing the time across your IT network.  This ensures that all network devices have the correct time and prevents deliberate falsification of time to alter a record.  Synchronizing your network time to an independent time source also supports interoperability, a growing requirement for electronic health records.

A Network Time Server Behind Your Firewall

The best solution for time synchronization is to install an accurate, reliable, and secure source of network time behind your firewall.  This will ensure accurate timestamping of all electronic records.  We offer several different time server models which will synchronize your network time to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).  UTC is recognized and used worldwide as the time standard for electronic record timestamping.  Our time servers obtain UTC through the Global Positioning System (GPS), which is an extremely reliable source of time.