Because your information technology and specially your computers are an investment, one which you should expect a decent return on. For instance, if you purchased a new Server , Desktop or Notebook in the range of $500 to $ 5000, then you must have thought that the benefit of the computer out weighed the great cost. You must have expected that computer to provide your practice with many hours of productive work.
Computers have fast moving parts ( i.e. hard disks and fan ), generate heat and have electronics circuit boards expose to electricity, office environment air and dots. They are also connected to the Internet .Like a car driving in a highway sometime 8 to 15 hours a day. Which brings us to the point. Like it or not, somebody needs to actively take responsibility for keeping each computer up-to-date and make sure your practice management and digital dentistry hardware and software works every day . Think of your computer like your car: every 3,000 miles, you change the oil. Every 15,000 miles, it goes in for more major maintenance. And as things break, they need to get fixed.
Computer maintenance is similar to car maintenance in that with the proper tools, talents, and time, anybody can do it. But do you really want to? Most of us just take our cars into somebody else’s shop and pay somebody to handle the maintenance for us. Obviously though, computer maintenance is different than car maintenance. Without maintenance, your car will eventually break down and stop working. It could kill you in the process, if something catastrophic goes wrong at a bad time. With a computer, the risks are entirely different:
Your computer could break down, taking all of your files , data base , x-ray pictures , digital photos, finances, and documents with it. Your computer could slow down, when a virus or spyware starts using up all of its memory, and uses your Internet connection to send itself to all of your friends. Spyware or viruses could reveal your personal information, such as your credit card numbers or social security numbers, along with anything you ever type into it.
Worms or viruses could lead you to being unable to get to web sites or send email to your friends and your patients , if your computer becomes marked as a virus-carrier. This also can compromise your business ( Hipaa ) and could lead to you revealing any data you have about your customers, thus potentially leading to you being the target of a lawsuit.
If above hardware are not regular maintenaned, then eventually your computer will begin to function below its optimal level or stops working . More importantly, if you do not have some kind of security audit on your system on regular intervals(whether by using second tier commercial software or by having a professional audit), then it is highly likely that your computer will be infected by various malware(bots, viruses, trojans, adaware/spyware), and the return on your investment will diminish--as you enjoy less hassle free hours of computing.
A lot of general everyday computer users and want to be IT technicians are not aware of how many viruses, bots, trojans, and root-kits are floating around the internet. A lot of these malware programs even stay in users system for a life of the time that they have them. More often, when we service dental offices for the first time discover bots and worms that have been in a clients system for 5 years or more. For dentsit with lap top , it is even worse. A number of these viruses are used for stealing data, or just using your computer resources to store spam and send spam.
Some offices us home based OS(operating systems) lack a lot of sophisticated security tools that the Professional or Business versions contain. computer users do not know how to use these tools anyway, and so cannot take advantage of them. If you have not had a professional check up on your computer you should really consider having one. HITEC-MED offer free computer survey and site surveys . A computer is not much different than a car, they are both complex modular machines that need regular maintenance to run optimally. Here's two question for you:
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