Here are two equally important facts about the healthcare market.
- 16.9 million mobile users in the U.S. accessed health information on their device during a three-month average period ending November 2011, according to comScore. The number represents a whopping 125 percent increase from the previous year.
- The explosion of mobile devices into the healthcare market is causing real concerns about how to secure such devices so that sensitive patient health information is not compromised.
Now, experts with backgrounds in the law, technology, healthcare IT, and securityand prevention of data breach have issued some recommendations on how to ensure that patient health data is not compromised. Here are a few of the tips from the complete reportpublished by ID Experts, a data breach prevention firm whose solutions are endorsed by the American Hospital Association. So hospitals and healthcare organizations, listen up.
Install geolocation tracking software and brick the mobile device
Rick Kam, founder of ID experts recommends installing geolocation tracking software or services for mobile devices. It is like getting an inexpensive insurance policy because once a device is stolen or lost, it can track and locate and if need be, erase all data from it.
More employees want to bring their own device, but patient information may be stored in them. One way to secure these devices is to “brick” them. In other words, a process by which all data, not just corporate information, can be erased remotely.Jon Neiditz, partner, Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough believes that employees are coming around to bricking their devices because in many cases their personal data stored on these devices are increasingly being backed up in the cloud.
Encrypt, encrypt, encrypt
Thumb drives count as mobile storage devices, so they need to be encrypted as much as a mobile device and laptops. Chris Apgar, president and CEO of Apgar and Associates, recommends that healthcare organizations should require encryption if employees will use personal mobile devices while handling sensitive information. In an ideal world, employees would respect a policy that prevented the storage of sensitive data on personal devices, but that policy is hard to enforce, Apgar believes.
Look toward financial industry for data management strategies
The healthcare industry should adopt some data protection practices from the financial industry, recommends ChadBoeckman, president, Secure Digital Solutions. This includes the tokenization of credit cardswhereby a token value replaces the credit card numbers and is used in securing electronic transactions. In the healthcare industry, this would allow people to access patient data when they needed to and only from devices and applications whose profiles have been created to have this access.
[Photo Credit: Freedigitalphotos]
By Arundhati Parmar
Arundhati Parmar is the Medical Devices Reporter at MedCity News. She has covered medical technology since 2008 and specialized in business journalism since 2001. Parmar has three degrees from three continents - a Bachelor of Arts in English from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India; a Masters in English Literature from the University of Sydney, Australia and a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University in Chicago. She has sworn never to enter a classroom again.More posts by Author
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