Leveling Up

Existing healthcare systems and med schools are pivoting into cloud-based infrastructure, and starting from scratch is uncommon – unless it’s the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine

Okay, Rebooters – it’s time for a pop quiz. As of 2025, which state ranks third as the best in the nation and has the lowest property crime rate and sixth best economy but is last in the nation when it comes to the number of physicians per capita?

In the mid-2010s Idaho was the most populous state in the union without a medical school. Today the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine (ICOM) is the first institution of its kind to choose cloud-first technology and a Software as a Service-based operating model before breaking ground.

When the project was in its infancy, Brian Atkinson was managing IT for the anatomy and physiology labs leased at the Idaho State University campus in Meridian. “I was very loosely affiliated with the ICOM project then,” he told us. Exhilarated by the chance to take ICOM from the vision of a truly future-built educational institution to reality he signed on as CIO, responsible for every aspect of its technical infrastructure. “We had the opportunity to start with the goal, which was really exciting.”

Their IT infrastructure strategy eliminates traditional data centers and servers and provides seamless access to learning resources and data for faculty and students both on-campus and remotely. It complies with a raft of crucial regulations, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), which requires higher education institutions to explain their information-sharing practices to their customers and to protect sensitive customer data.

ICOM uses SaaS applications for all of its operations, administrative functions, and learning technologies.

Bold moves such as these require everyone in the process to have nerves of steel. An all-SaaS model in any regulated industry with a vast amount of personally identifiable information requires complete visibility across its entire SaaS ecosystem. Cybersecurity is paramount, and flawless vetting is key to the success of this approach.

“We rely on our third-party vendor assessments and contract negotiations to ensure that our vendors are securing our data properly according to our contracts, but because we are in a SaaS environment, we can’t necessarily use traditional tools to protect that data and to have that same visibility across multiple vendors,” he revealed.

His choice of Island Technology’s enterprise browser fit the bill with a cutting-edge tool set that provides exceptional visibility; there’s no need for on-prem networking devices because their browser gives ICOM the control needed to protect data from single points of entry into their SaaS applications. “It’s really powerful,” he said, noting that the browser is device agnostic, so any faculty or staff member, or other authorized user can access the programs and data they need when and where they choose to use them.

“Island gives us the ability to log access to all of our SaaS applications in a centralized application,” he affirmed. “We can log into an Island management console and see when any of our users have been accessing sensitive data.”

The enterprise browser enables IT to log all of their compliance information and to create screenshots to show when PII is accessed. “We now have the ability to anonymize logging.
Privacy is critically important for our users, and being able to give that while we capture the logging that we need is really powerful.”

Island’s built-in password manager is a convenience for users, as is the browser’s built-in AI chatbot. “Having a chatbot that helps us learn to be more productive, using AI for good, is incredibly helpful,” he added.

The enterprise browser can restrict users to ICOM’s institutionally approved cloud storage, prompting the user to store data without revealing critical personal identifying information (PII) and allows ICOM to watermark web pages with sensitive information. “These little tools help us as information security professionals to feel more comfortable knowing that we are providing effective productivity tools for our faculty and staff and at the same time, establishing guardrails to ensure that data stays protected.”

ICOM has been an Apple Distinguished School since 2020, in recognition for the inventive use of technology. “Each student has an iPad, but our innovative use of technology to train our students is what gets us this recognition as an Apple Distinguished School,” he said. “There are a handful of medical schools that are Apple Distinguished Schools, but I don’t know of any other osteopathic medical schools that have this recognition yet.”

Building ICOM is only part of this story. The college is determined to help solve the state’s critical physician shortage.

With about 24 people per square mile, Idaho is the seventh least-densely populated state in the country. “Most of Idaho is made up of smaller rural communities that don’t have a lot of access to healthcare. Being able to address those patients’ unique needs is really important for the state,” he said. “In addition to our work at the medical school, residency programs – also known as graduate medical education – also need to grow and expand, to help combat Idaho’s physician shortage.”

Prospective DOs spend their first two years on campus, participating in lecture-based learning and working with sophisticated, high-fidelity simulation manikins that recreate everything from blinking to birthing, as well as working with patient actors in simulated clinical encounters.

Years three and four are spent in clinical rotations across the country. Clinical rotations take place in various settings, including inpatient experiences at hospitals, ambulatory practices, and long-term care facilities, to name a few.

DOs receive the same kind of training as MDs, along with training in osteopathic principles and practice. They go on to specialize in all the same things that an MD might choose, whether that’s family medicine, emergency medicine, surgery, or psychiatry.

In building a modern infrastructure to address physician shortages and bringing the 21st century into rural medicine, ICOM is achieving stellar results. With an average student retention rate of over 95%, and a 145-strong graduating class of 2025, ICOM is already leaving an impressive legacy for rural medical systems to follow.