Businesses and organizations that work with health care data, like hospitals or medical device manufacturers, can face challenges sharing it securely. They may have to contend with ethical concerns and regulations like HIPAA in addition to standard cybersecurity concerns.
However, health care data can be shared safely with the right tools and practices but only if organizations take care to develop the right strategy.
Health Data Security Challenges
A wide range of factors including human error, poor security practices and system malfunction can result in data breaches that expose patient health care data.
At the same time, the growing value and volume of available health care data have made this information a significant target for hackers and cybercriminals. It may be even more valuable than patient financial details in some cases.
Ransomware and phishing attacks may easily lead to the exposure of sensitive patient information to hackers. As these attacks become more common and health care organizations become more frequent targets of cybercriminals, secure data sharing and system interoperability will become even more crucial.
Businesses are collecting and sharing more health care data than ever, and the time has come to implement newer, more secure sharing policies.
Best Practices for Secure Data Sharing
In many cases, data sharing best practices that work for all businesses will also help health care organizations manage information sharing. For example, permission levels and access controls can help reduce the risk that unauthorized parties or devices can access protected information.
Data sharing education and cybersecurity programs will also be essential. Even basic training can significantly reduce the risk of human error leading to breaches or improper sharing.
Security training can help employees identify phishing attacks and other types of social engineering that hackers may use to gain access to protected information or organization networks.
Experts also recommend many other standard security measures for businesses that want to build HIPAA-compliant layered security strategies. This includes firewalls, disaster recovery controls, security patch management policies and regular vulnerability scanning.
The use of secure data-sharing platforms and tools will also be important. Modern data storage solutions, including intelligent and multi-cloud options, often include features that will make the secure transfer of information much easier for health care organizations.
Selecting industry-specific data sharing platforms, like electronic health records (EHRs) systems, that prioritize security and privacy will also be important. An EHR system from a developer that prioritizes secure sharing may make effective practices much easier than one that was not built with the same priorities in mind.
A careful review of a developers security policies and overall attitude toward secure data sharing can help businesses find the right tools.
Businesses can develop these policies in-house with their IT and cybersecurity teams or outsource their security planning to a managed services provider (MSP). Ideally, it should be experienced in building HIPAA-complaint security policies.
Navigating Regulations and Ethical Concerns
These best practices will provide a strong foundation for secure data sharing. However, organizations that want to remain HIPAA compliant may need to consider how the law may affect policies. Awareness of restrictions and permissions will help businesses identify when and how they can share patient health information (PHI).
These organizations should also know what information constitutes PHI and the 18 identifiers under HIPAA guidelines. In some situations, data that may seem like it should require secure sharing may not count as PHI. This changes the security requirements a facility must consider when sharing that information.
HIPAA is more flexible than many medical providers and businesses realize, meaning that the law does not necessarily prevent the safe sharing of medical data in many cases. For example, physicians may disclose PHI to another provider for the treatment activities of that provider, without needing patient consent or authorization.
The HIPAA definition of treatment activities is somewhat broad and can include providing, coordinating, or managing health care and related services.
Here are health care operations activities that providers can share data about without prior patient consent:
- Developing protocols and clinical guidelines
- Evaluating the performance of providers or health plans
- Conducting training programs or credentialing operations
Compliance with HIPAA limits the conditions under which providers can safely share data, but it doesnt eliminate the possibility. Thats true even if providers have not secured consent from the owners of PHI.
Working with an IT team or MSP that understands HIPAA permissions can simplify compliance and make secure and compliant data sharing much easier.
Organizations should also consider the ethical dimensions of their data-sharing policies. A strategy can be HIPAA compliant but potentially unethical if patient privacy and desires are not considered.
For example, even if an organization has permission to share the entirety of a patients PHI, they may be able to limit data sharing in a way that balances privacy against commercial concerns or staff needs.
How Big Health Data May Require Additional Security Controls
Health care providers and organizations are ramping up their data-collection practices, gathering large amounts of patient information. Devices like wearables and networked patient monitors may generate vast quantities of information that can be leveraged with big data analysis.
Big data can improve patient outcomes and streamline health care operations. However, securing large amounts of patient information can create some unique challenges. Businesses that adopt a big data approach may need to implement additional measures that allow for securely collecting and sharing data.
For example, filtering and classifying gathered data is necessary to analyze large volumes of PHI. Businesses can take advantage of security and access control as well as security measures like data anonymization, permutation and partitioning to safely prepare information for analysis.
While not every organization will need these additional controls, big data analysis is becoming increasingly necessary across the economy as data-gathering processes intensify. Planning now for how an organization will balance the adoption of big data analysis and patient privacy can help health care organizations prepare for a smooth integration of this technology.
Best Practices for Health Care Data Security
The growing value of data for health care providers has made security extremely important. A combination of basic best practices and HIPAA-specific security measures will help facilities safely and securely share information.
Businesses that adopt big data analytics may need to take special measures. Identifying methods for securely storing and transferring large amounts of information will help these companies keep PHI safe.
