Healthcare Information Security

The use of mobile technology in the healthcare industry has exploded in the last ten years. Mobile health or mHealth, provides an entire new aspect of the relationship between patients and their doctors and other medical providers. Mobile devices place important and critical information into a medical professional’s hands in real-time. Doctors can monitor a patient’s condition more frequently, allowing them to make better and more informed decisions and diagnoses.

With the enthusiasm for health information technology, potential risks and problems associated with electronic health records have received far less attention. Three fundamental security goals are essential to EHR systems: confidentiality, integrity and availability (Haas e26). Patients lose the protection of implied trust domain of medical institutions due to their medical record maintenance performed by non-medical enterprises (e27). Depending on the paradigm, enabling access to an increased number of users poses threats to security and privacy.

Automation and interconnections with information in their healthcare environments need increasing support, security measures need to be implemented without disrupting the workflow of approved users, costs associated with data breaches and damage to their reputation need to be avoided. IT budgets constraints also impose limitations in many healthcare institutions. Compliance with security and privacy related regulations in healthcare and making sure what policies and standards should be implemented requires solutions that clearly address security challenges so that they can be integrated into a healthcare institution’s existing infrastructure and business practice. As data is transmitted across countless environments and is stored on an ever-expanding grouping of endpoint and storage devices such as computers, laptops, and removable storage devices, it will become evident that there will be a need for strong encryption. Under the HITECH Act and comparable state laws, encrypted data that is received or acquired by unauthorized persons through a lost or stolen electronic device or an errant email, is typically not considered a breach. However, healthcare institutions need to determine the level of encryption they should adopt. For example, a hospital could decide where there is the greatest risk of information loss (patient data in email messages or on storage drive) that is not on internal

With the introduction of information technology advancement into the hospital health care system, we must embrace in this technology and must ensure that we have a more efficient and secure system. This will allow us to create measures that will allow us to protect electronic protected health information (ePHI). All data that is being transmitted on any open networks will be protected from any cyber attackers or unauthorized personnel. In order to protect this data, any ePHI data will be sent by encrypting the data to ensure that in the event that it is intercepted it

Massive security breaches have run rampant throughout the healthcare industry, making EHR’s harder and harder to properly implement. With increased scrutiny and the stringent regulations surrounding the healthcare industry, protecting the healthcare information stored electronically is critical to the success of any future attempts at implementing healthcare electronic recording systems. The struggle lies in the fact that so many threats exist that any facility can be completely overwhelmed with the daunting task of securing information while attempting to implement new systems. Although Healthcare info has many threats such as human, technological, and natural threats, and it faces intense scrutiny due to the HIPAA regulation requirements, it is still possible to protect and secure it through physical, administrative, and technical safeguards.

Privacy of health information has become an area of emphasis across the healthcare industry. It is important to understand what data is protected under federal regulations, how it can be shared, and how to prevent any accidental exposure of protected data. It is possible that data that should be protected can be exposed without anyone even realizing a violation has occurred. Exposure of protected healthcare data can result in medical identity theft and is therefore a very important and hot topic. The security and privacy of healthcare data is necessary to ensure consumer confidence in the healthcare industry and to prevent medical identity theft.

The advance in technology is so fascinating. We live in a world of smart phones and computers. The advancement in technology is enabling providers to reach out to those who would normally not seek traditional health care settings, especially the millennium population. A quick google search using key words smartphones and healthcare provides a wealth of information related to some of the up and coming ways healthcare providers are instituting.

Numerous health care industries have been victims of cyber-attacks. Such attacks occur when an isolated device transfers the stored medical data to the hospital’s network, which could possibly takeover the entire network of the hospital and intercept data exchange between the patient and the healthcare center. For instance, wearable devices such as the (insulin) diabetes kit that determines the exact amount to be discharged into the patient’s blood, based on

In a world full of electronics it would only seem logical to have health records electronic. Not only are medical records efficient, reliable, and quick to access, new technology allow patients to access their own personal medical records with a simple to use login and password. “People are asking whether any kind of electronic records can be made safe. If one is looking for a 100% privacy guarantee, the answer is no”(Thede, 2010). At my hospital, upon every admission we ask the patient for a password for friends and family to have to have if they would like an update on the patient 's condition. We do not let visitors come up and see the patient without the patient 's consent. In doing these things, we help to ensure the safety and protection of the patient 's health information and privacy.

In today’s society, medical records becomes a huge issue. In many organizations such as healthcare, patient confidentiality becomes a high concern. Having internet health services, creates a challenge for compliance in healthcare. Providers have treated application security and infrastructure security independently until now. Access must be secured for clinical applications to alleviate the concern from providers in healthcare. Therefore, IT infrastructure must be protected from hackers, misusing information as well as thieves. (FairWarning, n.d.)

In today’s age of healthcare, health informatic innovations such as the health information exchange have allowed electronically available healthcare data, such as clinical, administrative, and financial information, to be shared within healthcare systems, hospital networks, and other healthcare settings. As organizations begin to share sensitive information across political, geographical, and institutional boundaries, there is a constant risk of patient data being compromised. Therefore, close attention must be given to confronting the specific problems resulting in an increase in healthcare data breaches, as well as determining the appropriate solutions in order for healthcare organizations to protect sensitive patient data.

This research article examines the security concerns of using mobile technology systems in health care institution. Various methods of ensuring privacy and security of patient’s electronic medical information are addressed. This high quality article is relevant for present day mobile security issues. The authors utilize a host of credible references in the health care and information technology fields.

Information security and privacy is occupying a most important role in the healthcare territory in order to deliver protected information process to their patients (Appari, & Johnson, 2010). As healthcare department is the organization with vast data and essential information the hospitals has to keep a useful information security technique in their enterprise process (Mishra et al., 2011). Information security is one such phase in the healthcare sphere which is extremely problematic to describe and evaluate even to the individuals who are working on the process. In the healthcare organization, information is of many types which required for the work and even the security is a main control for almost all the practices which are transmitted out in the healthcare field (Appari, & Johnson, 2010). Hospitals, in specific, have been instructed to create a new set of security specialists to protect healthcare data tools techniques upon which exists may rely. Healthcare data is very critical for patients because it is very confidential records. If a medical apparatus is filled with a computer virus it can even exemplify a possibility to patients ' lives. Hence, hospitals should design alertness of the risk, to defend against concerns to healthcare databanks and be concerned about the high risk of infected computers or medical tools being connected to their networks (Mishra et al., 2011).

While software selection criteria were not in scope for this effort, it does warrant discussion on the overall availability of specialty software for the medical industry on iOS, Android and Windows platforms. Currently, most of the “MCA’s” or Medical Clinical Assistant platforms operate in a Windows-only environment, as do most of the key medical records and billing platforms in the medical field. The cost of custom software development to build a mobile solution is far beyond the budget of most local hospitals and not an endeavor to be undertaken lightly.

The rapid changes in technology over the past few decades has left the healthcare industry ill-prepared to operate in today’s environment. Most substantial protections of sensitive consumer information has come as a result of federal regulation, most notably in 1996 with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and 2009 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Protection of information in the healthcare industry has lagged behind all other industries, perhaps because the records aren’t financial in nature or sensitive government information. Implementing simple steps for many organizations may be enough to limit the vast majority of breaches, although a layered, comprehensive security approach should be the ultimate goal for companies.