Whitepapers

Did you hear the one a few years back about the intern who faxed some charts to a team of reviewers in advance of a meeting—with a cover note directing their attention to the figures in green? Quite a faux pas in the days before color faxes. But it’s no joke: Color can be one of the most powerful tools at an organization’s disposal when it comes to organizing information, increasing understanding, and making people and operations more productive and efficient. And today, the technology for color printing to help achieve these ends is more advanced, accessible and affordable than ever.

“If you want to understand how color impacts us, next time you get in the car, take note of how you stop at red and go on green. Color plays a big role in persuasion. We should understand its value.”

–Bryan Eisenberg, ”The Color of Money,” ClickZ Network continue reading...

“Our focus has always been on providing the very best treatment for our patients,” commented Carl Labbadia, Grove Hill’s Director of Information Systems (IS). “At times this has meant that our energies have not always been directed at remaining on the leading edge of information technology. For the last 12 years, with attention being paid to other areas of optimizing patient care, we’ve ran the same legacy billing and appointment management system.”

He continued, “Each of our eight locations were connected using a proprietary local area transport protocol and we had over 100 dot-matrix printers, distributed across all of the offices to print patients’ Encounter forms. These forms cover standard information, such as name, date of birth, physician’s name, and lists of common procedures with associated diagnoses for medical staff to check-off and were printed on two-part, pre-printed stationary.“

Encounter forms were created for every patient visit – totaling over 5,000 forms each day. “There were multiple disadvantages with the old infrastructure,” recalled Labbadia. “The technology had become costly to manage and maintain. Fifteen percent of my technicians’ time was spent supporting and repairing the old dot-matrix printers. continue reading...

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology has instituted a security checklist program. Checklists can be developed not only by IT vendors, but also by consortia,  cademia, industry, federal agencies and other governmental organizations, as well as other entities in the public and private sectors. A security configuration checklist (sometimes referred to as a lockdown guide, hardening guide or benchmark configuration) is essentially a document that contains instructions or procedures for configuring an IT product to a baseline level of security. Many technology devices have approved security checklists. However, HP is the first printer/MFP manufacturer to have a security checklist approved and published by NIST. Unlike other certifications, which often certify only certain features, the checklist program locks down or secures the entire MFP solution.

HP considers security checklists as a means to significantly improve the security capabilities' ease of configuration for imaging and printing products. HP submitted a security checklist for the HP LaserJet 4345 and 4370 printers in September 2006. At the time of submission, HP was the only hardcopy manufacturer to submit a checklist for review. HP plans to develop additional checklists for hardcopy devices in the future.
A checklist might include any of the following:
• Configuration files that automatically set various security settings (e.g., executables, security templates that modify settings, scripts)
• Documentation (e.g., text file) that guides the checklist user to manually configure software
• Documents that explain the recommended methods to securely install and configure a device
• Policy documents that set forth guidelines for such things as auditing, authentication security (e.g., passwords), and perimeter security continue reading...

Printing Savings Opportunity
The temptation to save money by purchasing a black-and-white printer makes sense for anyone who is sensitive to the need to make the most prudent use of public dollars. Yet, when you consider additional cost factors, such as the price you’ll pay an outside vendor to handle your color printing needs, that black-and-white printer may not be such a bargain as the following example shows. In this case we are assuming:
a. Both printers have similar features and speed for black-and-white printing.
b. Assumed volume: 100 black-and-white pages per day, 5 days per week, 52 weeks per year for 3 years. Total: 78,000 pages.
c. All color pages are printed on both sides.
d. The organization will print 200 color pages per month over the lifetime of the printer (approximately three years) for a total of 7,200
lifetime pages. continue reading...