no on premises servers to build or run
near zero learning curve moving to Island
Idaho's first medical school
Meet ICOM
The Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine (ICOM) was established in 2016 as the first medical school in the state. Located at the Meridian campus of Idaho State University, ICOM aims to improve access to high-quality healthcare in Idaho and other underserved regions. Recent data from the Association of American Medical Colleges ranks Idaho 50th in the nation for the number of active physicians per capita. ICOM's 162 students per class will make a meaningful difference for the residents in the state.
The challenge: operating the college of medicine on SaaS
The founding directors of ICOM set out with a vision for the role of technology in teaching and learning. They took full advantage of their opportunity to design the school around modern technology practices, including SaaS applications and 100% Apple devices for students and faculty. ICOM is an Apple Distinguished School, one of only 47 higher education institutions in the U.S. with this distinction.
This approach helped ICOM avoid the capital and operational expenses of building and maintaining a datacenter full of traditional server infrastructure. Students and faculty benefit from seamless access to learning resources and applications, whether on-campus or off.
As a medical school, ICOM is responsible for strict adherence to cybersecurity practices and regulatory compliance to protect sensitive data. This includes the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that covers patient records, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) that covers education records, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) that covers financial records, among others.
To fulfill the requirements of robust data protections, compliance standards, and frictionless digital access, ICOM adopted Island, the Enterprise Browser.
The solution: the enterprise browser as application delivery platform
Using Island gives faculty and staff quick and convenient access to all the learning and teaching resources they need with a familiar browser interface. At the same time, it equips the ICOM technology team with the controls and data protections they need to ensure sensitive applications and data are protected.
Brian Atkinson, Chief Information Officer at ICOM, first learned about Island at an industry conference and immediately saw the potential. Unlike the other technology solutions he was exploring, Island requires zero on-premises infrastructure and natively supports Apple devices. At the time, he remarked to a colleague, "This does exactly what we've been imagining in our heads!"
The real test for Island was how it would be received by the faculty and staff. After introducing the Enterprise Browser and explaining the value it would bring to ICOM, the results were positive. Around 85% of ICOM faculty were already using Chrome, so switching to the Chromium-based Island Enterprise Browser was an easy transition with essentially zero learning curve.
Island creates a secure, frictionless workspace for faculty and staff. Whether on-campus or off, faculty can access the applications and resources they need, simply by opening the Island browser.
"Island gives them the flexibility to be able to access data safely, whether they're working from the clinic, or they're here on campus, or they're working from home. It's really powerful." — Brian Atkinson, CIO
What about privacy?
Some faculty were understandably concerned about their privacy while using Island. The platform has the capability to record every website and user action, so they wanted to know how it would be used. According to Brian, "one of the great parts about Island is that the policies that we can write are super granular, so we can track the data that we have compliance requirements on, but the rest of it can be anonymous, and we don't need to be restricting users needlessly."
An advantage of the Enterprise Browser approach is that policies are defined in the cloud (through the Island Management Console) but applied locally in the browser. When users visit an application or page with enhanced auditing policies, their activity is logged. If the same user navigates to a personal destination outside of the scope of policy enforcement, that activity is anonymized.
The future
Perhaps the most important aspect of choosing Island is the flexibility to grow with ICOM. As an innovative education institution, it's a certainty that their technology and application needs will change over time. With Island, the ICOM technology team can easily introduce new applications and adjust their policies and controls to align with new requirements. Brian put it best in his assessment of the future potential with Island: "It seems like almost anything I can dream up, I can do."