Streamlined data access makes life better for healthcare professionals: Introducing QwickACCESS for Citrix XenDesktop on Chrome OS
In healthcare, every second counts, which means the faster clinicians can access their workspace, the more time they can focus on patient care. To accelerate this process, HealthCast is announcing a new application — QwickACCESS — which has been verified as Citrix Ready for XenDesktop. QwickACCESS integrates with Citrix receiver for Chrome HDX SDK and allows users to seamlessly access their Citrix XenDesktop session on Chrome OS with a proximity badge.
Through this joint solution with Google, clinicians now have the ability to tap-in/tap-out with their proximity badge to access their XenDesktop session on Chrome OS. You can read more detail about this collaboration, as well as a solution guide. You can find more detail about the QwickACCESS application here.
Citrix, Healthcast and Chrome OS solution for clinicians:
Citrix customers need the simplest, most secure, and easy-to-manage application virtualization solution available in the market. This new solution combines the strength of HealthCast Inc. and Google Cloud to provide an exciting and innovative solution to access desktops, applications and data securely in the most demanding healthcare environments.
Our healthcare customers have been looking for ways to improve the speed and efficiency of authentication. To address this challenge, Citrix, HealthCast, and Google Cloud worked together to provide Chrome OS users with an efficient and secure logon process via proximity badge, improving clinician productivity and patient engagement without compromising security. This solution is available today with the HealthCast application ‘QwickACCESS’ integrated with Citrix XenDesktop and Chrome OS. QwickACCESS integrates with Citrix receiver for Chrome HDX SDK and Chrome USB APIs,allowing users to seamlessly access their Citrix XenDesktop session on Chrome OS with a proximity badge.
Through this joint solution, clinicians can simply…
- Tap-in with their proximity badge to access their XenDesktop session,
- Tap-out a second time with their proximity badge to save and secure their session for access at a later time
- Tap-over another user’s session, securing the open session and enabling it to be accessed anywhere on any supported Chrome OS device in the shared network.
As you can see in the images below, the customer just needs to “tap-in” their proximity badge to access Citrix XenDesktop session on the Chrome OS.
Let’s take a closer look at how QwickACCESS works!
QwickACCESS provides clinicians with simple, fast, and secure sign-on to access their workstations. Unique proximity badge functionality allows users to log on by simply tapping a proximity badge on a badge scanner, and securing their session for access at a later time by tapping their badge a second time to log off. Citrix can also be configured to automatically secure a user session if the user forgets to tap-out, supporting user compliance with organization policies to lock their session for data privacy. QwickACCESS interfaces with Citrix StoreFront, Citrix Receiver for Chrome, and the Chrome USB API to connect the end-user to a XenDesktop session. And with QwickACCESS’ auditing, administrators can look up proximity badge activity of all QwickACCESS users.
More about the Citrix Receiver for Chrome HDX SDK
Citrix Receiver for Chrome enables Independent Software Vendors to build on the HDX SDK and open their published applications for any predefined event such as tapping of a card. The SDK allows the apps to launch XenApp and XenDesktop sessions with control and security restrictions. The applications can use below mentioned XenApp/Desktop APIs further.
- Launch
- Show
- Hide
- Disconnect
- Launch the session in embedded mode
The apps can also receive event details related to connection, disconnect and errors about the receiver sessions.
HDX SDK decouples authentication from XenApp/XenDesktop session launch. You can authenticate in your app with StoreFront using SFSDK and then launch session with HDX SDK.
For security reasons, only the applications whitelisted in the Citrix Receiver for Chrome policy can access the SDK to directly connect to XenApp and XenDesktop sessions and use any authentication mechanism suitable for your app to authenticate with StoreFront. For example, the app can have a username/password saved or hardcoded.
Who will benefit from using HDX SDK?
- Citrix customers who want to customize their business critical applications and give end-users an enhanced experience through Citrix receiver for Chrome.
- Citrix Ready ISV partners who want to give “local-like” experience to their customers of their apps running inside a XenApp or XenDesktop session
There are many more use cases that HDX SDK helps. For more information on HDX SDK APIs and examples, visit the download page, or read the HDX SDK API documentation for Chrome OS.
Currently, QwickACCESS is supported in Kiosk mode, Public session mode, and user mode on all devices running Chrome OS (Chromebook, Chromebox, Chromebit, and Chromebase). We are excited about the solution and the collaboration between Citrix, Google Cloud and HealthCast. Find our more about the QwickACCESS application and read Google’s announcement blog post.
We value your feedback as you research, test and deploy our solutions, so please share your thoughts in the comments below and through our customer support channels.
To learn more about the Citrix, Google and Healthcast partnership, visit us at HIMSS in the Cybersecurity Command Center at Level 2, Titian Ballroom, Booth 8600, Kiosk 46 and visit the Citrix Ready team in the Citrix Ready Pavilion, Booth number 12332.
