Personal Health Record ( Phr )

Ultimately, the software, equipment and cloud solutions the companies and vendors provide will have to demonstrate a high quality of security and reliability. Patients’ private medical data as well as their lives are at risk in this new arena of technology.

There is no doubt in that technology has multifaceted benefits but, at the same time, it has forced mankind to feel insecure. Every industry depends upon the data of the customers and the health industry is no more an exception here. The data of each patient is shared to facilitate health itself and for more rigorous and authentic research. Hence, protecting patient data is very important. It is so important that in 1996, the federal government introduced the Health Insurance

EHR was created to have a technical way to securely exchange private and personal medical health information in hopes to improve the quality of care, decrease medical errors, limiting paper use, reduction of health care cost, and increasing a person access to affordable health care. A mandate was created for EHR stating that health records can be accessible to all facilities with patients having the capability to access their own health records at any time. Ameliorating the quality and convenience of care given to a patient, allow for cost saving measures, engage the patient and family to participate in their care, improve accuracy of medical diagnosis, and enhance the efficiency of the overall outcome of the patients’ health.

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

The electronic protected health information (ePHI) gets electronically stored and collected in hard copy form as they secure the information. According to the U.S. Department of health and Human Service Office for Civil Rights (OCR) report, millions of people have been impacted by HIPAA data breaches. Hence, healthcare organizations must protect and secure personal health data now more than ever because of the threats that are associated with information. This would substantially increase the protection of healthcare from cyber threats. Moreover, these people are extremely diverse and the cleverness of their data information must be organized within hospitals. Medical records are in high demand because of the sophistication of the records.

As health professionals, it’s essential to take every precaution to protect sensitive patient information including personal contact information and medical history. Patient data is regulated by the government and provides privacy and security provisions for safeguarding medical information. The law that regulates these processes, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), has become a prominent point of public discussion over recent years due to an onslaught of security concerns and cyberattacks on health providers and insurers.

PHR could be defined as “An electronic application through which individuals can access, manage and share their health information, and that of others for whom they are authorized, in a private, secure, and confidential environment”. A PHR should not be confused with an electronic health record (EHR). While EHR is entered and edited by health care provider, PHR is accessed and, in some cases, edited by the patient himself.

Today, the patient will visit the same doctor and the doctor will enter the data into a tablet or pc. The EHR is a designed very similar to the paper chart, but is programmed to collect and segregate the information in different formats to transmit securely to the necessary partners. Those partners include insurance carriers, public health entities, clearinghouses, laboratories, and pharmacist. This data is collected and stored on secure servers. In most EHR’s today, a doctor who has a private practice, and maybe affiliated with a hospital has the ability to allow the hospital to access a patient’s record, if that patient has agreed to release their information to the hospitals. So if the patient is taken to the local hospital, the hospital can have access to the patient’s records if an authorization is in place. The EHR will not only collect the patient medical information, it will track the medical information. Providers are required to secure the information and track the medical records activity via a built-in audit system that will show the medical records history and the name of all parties that access the patient’s records. Poor EHR system design and improper use can cause EHR-related errors that jeopardize the integrity of the information in the EHR, leading to errors that endanger patient safety or decrease the quality of care. These unintended consequences also may increase fraud and abuse and can have

Part 2 - A Personal Health Record, or PHR, is a health record in which the data and information are maintained not by the clinic or provider, but by the patient. PHRs are different than EMR because they are not only a personal record kept by the patient, but health data collected on the patient remotely through a SmartPhone or other device. PHRs are available online, usually secure and encrypted. The advent of the Internet, more power for personal computing, and more sophisticated devices have also increased the popularity of this kind of data vault. A good way to understand this concept is that a PHR is a folder held within a Portal (strongbox) that has important information that needs to be accessible at certain times. This allows the patient to take more

When it comes to healthcare there are a lot of things that have evolved. One in particular is that of the patients’ health care records and how they are written as well as being stored. In this paper I will be discussing the evolution of this process via the Health Information Exchange or HIE. This will involve the history of the system, problems that are involved in this evolution, as well as the security issues that will need to be addressed when moving from different types of records.

Nowadays, Personalized medicine is an promising way of treatment for the patients. Medical records make into standardize and manage in the form of Electronic Medical Record.(EMR). Personal health record (PHR) is essential for continuing the treatment, tracing the previous clinical reports and in taking drugs. The management of PHR by hand increases the time of processing and arise the complexity in storage problem. The health information exchange often outsources the data to be stored at a third party. Third party implements the encryption techniques for access control mechanism. The access control mechanism provides the security against intruders and unauthorized person.

Protecting data in the healthcare is extremely important as it contains valuable information about the patient like personally identified health information. The information is vital, as it exhibits a strong relationship between doctor and patient for dealing with any issues the patient might have. It provides, absolute care, and gives better information to a patient or physician required for the course of actions. The consequences that could take place with this information can be data breaches, such as unauthorized access to the information or data in health records, and can result in atypical activities. To avoid this, the data or the information in the Electronic Medical Records must be provided with strong privacy and security laws. International law provides Privacy and Security regulations to protect the data of health care organizations. Despite the laws implemented there are certain data breaches taking place in day-to-day life, which is growing. This paper reviews the privacy and security laws that are implemented and followed in the USA, India, and the European Union and in particular regional laws/ regulations and the differences between them. There are certain reporting obligations and penalties that must be obeyed in case of violation of these laws/ regulations which will discuss here. This paper also

The only time I have encountered a patient health record (PHR) is when I actually admit a patient to my unit. However, I do have access to my PHR once I get discharged from the hospital. It had never dawned on me that the PHR could be scanned onto a thumb dive or wallet size cards. According to (Hebda & Czar (2013), the PHR’s allow patient to view, collect, manage or share their health or process health-related transaction electronically. Health Information Technology (HIT) played an integral role in helping clients on how to gain access to his or her PHR.

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.)