Aligning user identities with Healthcare IT Systems is one complex task the enterprise IT administrators struggle with. This is due to systematic barriers in integrating user Identities (including employees, providers, external laboratories, etc) with EMR Systems such as Cerner. Cerner Corporation is a supplier of Health Information Technology (HIT) solutions, services, devices, and hardware. One of Cerner Corporation’s products, Cerner Millennium Solution is a powerful and widely adopted software that provides an individual electronic care record for every patient and smart tools for the clinical staff to help with executing precise medical diagnosis.

The problem surfaces when this powerful tool has to interact with Identity Management Solution. Within Cerner Millennium, a user must be provisioned into each domain using tools that interact with Cerner Millennium. Some of these tools are User Maintenance (HNAUser.exe), Content Manager, or the Bedrock Personnel Wizard. A similar application integrator has been missing to enable Cerner Millennium to interact with the Identity Management framework. This situation creates additional administrative work as users must be provisioned manually outside of enterprise provisioning solutions. The complexity increases when a healthcare setting has multiple EMR solutions, different resources are allocated to manage them.

Integrating Cerner Millennium Solution (just like numerous IT applications) with IAM infrastructure is important for better reporting, faster onboarding/removal of employees and easier management of user identity. In addition to management of user identity – an integrator could work towards syncing Cerner Millennium with IAM infrastructure to improve efficiency and reducing errors, password resets and improper access.

Avancer developed a generic Cerner connector catering to all Identity Management functions that automate communication between Cerner’s Healthcare IT Solutions and any Identity Management system. Avancer started off with provision and de-provision accounts on Cerner into various positions on the server. Through application integrators, a user could possess one or multiple accounts and authenticate to different data sources. It facilitated the reconciliation of existing accounts into the IDM system. Cerner Millennium-IdM Provisioning Enterprise Adaptor adds Certification capabilities on which managers and audit team members can take certification-related actions such as certify positions (credentials and other information) or revoke positions to ensure closed-loop remediation for any violations in Cerner related system access. All these tasks were automated through IAM System. Management of the aforementioned functions was done by custom development of capabilities inside an IAM system.

Cerner Millennium-IdM Provisioning Enterprise Adaptor provides the following benefits for system or security administrators and end-users:

• Increased Productivity: Enables timely and accurate automation of the Cerner Millennium Identity/User provisioning process and ties the process to existing enterprise provisioning systems.
• Cost Reduction: Decreased maintenance costs, auditing requirements, and data security risk to User Identity information as it can be stored in a single, external location.
• Achieve Interoperability: Robust interaction with existing Identity Management Systems to facilitate provisioning/de-provisioning compatibility.
• Robust Functionality: Track an inactive user’s record in all associated domains from a single source, no additional certification required.

Avancer is the first organization to develop and deploy Cerner Millennium Application Integrator (Connector) for the Oracle IdM system. Over 5,000 identities were onboarded through an integration between the Cerner’s Millennium Solution and Oracle Identity Management Solution. The capabilities of the connector have been extended to any ID system.