Alibaba Cloud Launches Healthcare Security Solution Integrating Ant Group's Technology to Combat Ticket Scalpers

On May 27, Alibaba Cloud showcased its innovative healthcare concepts and technologies for the DT (Data Technology) era at the 2016 China Hospital Information Network Conference (CHINC), and released its latest healthcare security solution and storage gateway solution to help medical institutions address challenges such as “data security” and “long-term storage of massive data.”

Huojia, Technical Expert of Alibaba Medical Cloud, Delivers On-Site Presentation on Healthcare Security Solutions

For the healthcare industry, information systems have become indispensable in supporting business operations. The wave of “Internet Plus” has presented new challenges to hospital IT departments: while hospitals seek to leverage cloud computing and internet technologies to deliver more flexible and convenient services, they must also confront emerging security threats due to the sensitive nature of medical information in their “Internet Plus” initiatives.

In response, Xu Dong, General Manager of the Internet+ Division at Alibaba Cloud, stated that to achieve smart healthcare, it is first necessary to breathe life into dormant data while ensuring data security. By leveraging advanced technologies such as cloud computing and big data, medical institutions can reduce security risks and lower storage costs, thereby making healthcare smarter and enabling innovation to be lighter and faster.

Technical Identification of Scalpers to Enhance “Cloud” Security

Due to the uneven distribution of medical resources, some healthcare institutions have long been plagued by issues such as “appointment scalping by bots” and “ticket touting.” Since it is difficult to quickly and accurately identify such activities through manual means alone, cloud computing and big data technologies can often play a more significant role.

According to the introduction, Alibaba’s medical cloud security solution integrates the technological security research achievements accumulated by Alibaba Group over many years. By combining the powerful data analytics capabilities of its cloud computing platform with Ant Financial’s big data-driven anti-fraud and risk control capabilities, it provides the healthcare industry with a comprehensive suite of security products and customized services. The solution offers three key advantages: prevention of data leakage, countermeasures against ticket scalpers (unauthorized resellers), and support for regulatory compliance.

Huojia, a technical expert at Alibaba Medical Cloud, introduced that the medical security solution integrates Alibaba Cloud’s big data analytics technology with Ant Financial’s Ant Shield research findings in anti-fraud, jointly helping healthcare institutions rapidly identify “scalpers.” It was revealed that Alipay Future Hospital has already begun implementing collaborations with hospitals on scalper prevention, with the service expected to go live soon.

Furthermore, in response to hospitals’ stringent security requirements, the medical security solution safeguards the integrity of healthcare institutions’ data and systems across four dimensions: network security, server security, data security, and business security.

• Developed a comprehensive suite of products and services, including Web Application Firewall (WAF), Server Guard, Vulnerability Reward Program, Anti-Fraud, Certificate Services, and Threat Detection Service.

• Supports Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), enabling healthcare customers to build a secure, isolated, and customizable network environment on Alibaba Cloud.

• Adopting a distributed file storage architecture, information is split into numerous data fragments that are encrypted and stored across different devices to ensure data security.

• Provide comprehensive security technical measures to help medical applications on Alibaba Cloud fully meet the technical requirements of Level 3 Classified Protection.

Currently, Alibaba Cloud has partnered with over 1,000 direct healthcare institutions, including large Grade A tertiary hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, in-hospital medical device manufacturers, and medical wearable technology firms. Huang Hong, Director of the Information Center at Shanghai Huashan Hospital—which has fully implemented Alibaba Cloud’s healthcare security solutions—believes that addressing security issues should be achieved in a “subtle and unobtrusive” manner. Basic requirements include low solution deployment costs and minimal operational maintenance effort. Ideally, the security protection layer should keep threats at bay before they reach the system, allowing business operations to remain completely unaware of security risks, whether from traditional DDoS attacks or various emerging attack vectors. “Alibaba Cloud is better equipped to meet Huashan Hospital’s security needs,” said Huang.

Revitalize Dormant Data to Cut Storage Costs by 30%

When a patient seeks medical care, their past medical records and diagnostic data become crucial references for the physician’s assessment of their condition. In accordance with relevant regulations, medical imaging data such as case records must be retained for at least 15 years, while certain valuable materials may need to be preserved indefinitely.

How to achieve “permanent” storage? The current common practice in hospitals is to digitize paper records and store them in their own data centers. However, as the volume of data continues to grow, this approach not only incurs substantial storage costs but also leaves a large amount of data “gathered dust,” failing to unlock its true value.

In response, Alibaba Cloud has leveraged the strength of its ecosystem partners to develop a high-availability, cost-effective storage gateway solution based on the Alibaba Cloud computing platform. Hospitals can synchronize medical imaging data to the cloud for secure, encrypted backup through simple operations, without modifying a single line of code. This approach revitalizes dormant data, addressing the challenges of inaccessible and unusable data in healthcare institutions.

Meanwhile, it effectively reduces data storage costs. A rough estimate suggests that adopting cloud-based solutions can lower storage costs by at least 30% compared to traditional IDC models.

According to reports, this marks Alibaba Cloud’s second appearance at CHINC. “In 2015, Alibaba Cloud launched its Healthcare Cloud at the CHINC conference. After one year of development, the Healthcare Cloud has directly served more than a thousand healthcare and medical institutions. To continuously enhance our offerings and better meet customer needs, we will continue to develop more targeted products and services that address pain points in the healthcare industry, building upon our comprehensive Healthcare Cloud solution,” said Xu Dong.