This is part 2 of a blog on healthcare security. For more info, check out part 1. An independent guest blogger wrote this blog. When it comes to data security, there is no more important place than the healthcare industry. When people go to the doctor, they provide all of their most sensitive information, from their health issues to their phone number, to a doctor they trust.
These days, effective cybersecurity in healthcare is as critical as ever. Last year, more than 32 million patients had their personal and medical information stolen in data breaches across the United States. While moves are being made, the fact remains that healthcare providers still have many holes to plug when it comes to the illegal or accidental outpouring of patient data.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) was signed into law before the rollout of major social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And as such, there are no specific HIPAA rules for social media. However, some HIPAA laws and standards apply to the use of social media by health care organizations and their workers. Because of that, each health care organization must implement a HIPAA social media policy to decrease the risk of HIPAA violations.
Protected health information (PHI) is any information about health status, provision of health care or payment for health care that is created or collected by a covered entity, or their business associate, and can be linked to a specific individual. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) requires covered entities to implement safeguards to ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of PHI.
Healthcare continues to see staggering growth in breaches to patient health information. In the first half of 2019 alone, 32 million health records were breached, compared to 15 million records in the entire year of 2018. However, this trend of growing cyber breaches in healthcare is likely to persist due to the following characteristics of the healthcare industry...
Image Source: Unsplash Finding a new health-related app that tracks symptoms, increases self-care behaviors, or offers disease-specific education can be exciting for consumers. However, many apps share information with a host of other companies for marketing purposes. Often, these companies have nothing to do with healthcare and are not even a business the individual uses.
Even though the healthcare industry has been slower to adopt Internet of Things technologies than other industries, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is destined to transform how we keep people safe and healthy, especially as the demand for lowering healthcare costs increases. The Internet of Medical Things refers to the connected system of medical devices and applications that collect data that is then provided to healthcare IT systems through online computer networks.
Introduction Developing new drugs is an expensive, time-consuming endeavor. A critical output of the drug development process, besides the compound itself, is data. As you may have read recently, Zolgensma™ re-surfaced in the press because of supposed data manipulation in a specific animal testing procedure. Needless to say, this is a big deal.
Healthcare breaches continue to be featured in the news. Hospitals continue to be ideal targets for hacking and other cybersecurity threats. This is evidenced by the increasing number of cyber attacks, including sophisticated ransomware attacks on hospitals. Many hospitals are beefing up their technologies and infrastructure to address the threat of cyber attacks. But they are neglecting a major weak link in data security: the clinicians.
