New penalties in the HIPAA update are forcing hospitals to take data breaches more seriously, as service providers like Verizon have found (here’s a short summary). Updates to the rule treat health IT vendors as business partners with shared liability for patient data breaches. That has spurred them to have more meaningful conversations with Verizon and other vendors as they work out Business Associate Agreements.
“Prior to the omnibus rule, providers barely spoke with service providers,” noted Chris Davis, a compliance solutions architect with Verizon. “We are all playing under same set of security rules now… We have a vehicle for these conversations now.”
The use of cloud for data storage and processing needs in healthcare has been growing, as illustrated (though not separated from) in Verizon’s State of the Cloud report. The need for interoperability to make health information exchanges work is another area where the cloud is serving a critical role. The growth of mhealth has helped too. Using mobile devices to access patient information such as electronic health records is another place the cloud serves a need. Hospitals are also using the cloud to share information requiring huge data storage capacity, such as medical images and to address big data needs.
Behavioral Health, Interoperability and eConsent: Meeting the Demands of CMS Final Rule Compliance
In a webinar on April 16 at 1pm ET, Aneesh Chopra will moderate a discussion with executives from DocuSign, Velatura, and behavioral health providers on eConsent, health information exchange and compliance with the CMS Final Rule on interoperability.
Davis said Moore’s Law for computing — that processing power for computers will double every two years — is also applicable to the cloud. Davis points out that processing capacity for the cloud has doubled in the past two years and expects it to double again in another 18 months. Storage is growing significantly, driven by customers’ needs.
Davis observed that mobile devices have been common in healthcare for a while. He contradicts the occasional bemusement expressed by the increasingly common sight of doctors walking around with smartphones and iPads. “Healthcare has used mobile devices longer than any other industry,” said Davis.
As a for instance, he points out that doctors used PalmPilots and iPAQs 10 years ago. One very dated press release by iPAQ referred to them as pocket PCs and its list of professional users began with physicians. The problem was that they didn’t have nearly enough storage capacity. The cloud has helped take storage and portability limitations out of the equation.
Among some of the more interesting points in the new report are:
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
- A 90 percent increase in cloud-based storage as part of a shift to business critical applications to the cloud.
- Production applications account for 60 percent of cloud usage
- Groups are also using the cloud for external facing business applications.
- Growth in big data is driving cloud adoption because more capacity needed for data management and analysis
