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securing healthcare data If you have not been to a healthcare provider in the last few years, you are missing out on the amazing transformation. The transformation will effect all of us and the quality of the lives that we lead, both now and in the future. Whether it is the use of technology in how your healthcare is delivered (telemedicine, or smart monitoring apps) or monitored. The impact has so far been enormous. With the interaction between the doctor and the patient becoming more interactive. The development of more healthcare provider apps only helps to facilitate this process. Which allows for the ability to provide enhanced healthcare services to their patients. Advancing Medical Technology While most of us would be cautious when it comes to adopting new technology, I am looking forward to the transformations that it is bringing. New technologies are being developed every day that allow new interaction with the healthcare provider and those they care for. Whether it is how the data is analyzed or developing new ways to deliver that analysis, the information age has finally come to healthcare. Technology Challenges While there are continuing advances in healthcare, there are also new challenges that companies will have to weigh as they continue to increase the amount of data they collect on an individual patient. Securing the data has now become the focus of the healthcare industry service providers. Whether it is in the cloud, or on premises, your data needs to be protected. With new ways to collect data, the data streams may be both, diverse and many. Collecting and storing this data will be an ever-increasing issue for hospitals and clinics as they become ever more data driven service providers. While analyzing data will provide enhanced or more focused services and treatment. What happens to that data after it has been used is still one area that providers continue to struggle with. Data Overload While data is crucial to the healthcare revolution that is going on these days, it is also one of the reasons that providers can do more with it. Whether it is sensitive information, or data about the condition of the patient, healthcare providers need to secure it. Some areas of focus for the IT Security Professional should be:
Increased Capabilities
With all the additional data points that are being created, it goes without saying that the capabilities of analyzing this information is increased. The use of supercomputers and large data sets will allow healthcare providers to look at the minutest details in order to determine patterns. The new analytics can in fact save lives by providing the healthcare worker with insight into areas that may not have been connected before. Whether it is providing a centralized location for all of the data on a hospital floor. Setting off alarms when certain conditions are met, can be one use of this constant monitoring that happens. The new analytics can improve your health in ways that were only a dream a few years ago. Connecting the dots when looking at data helps to increase the efficiency of the healthcare system and provide needed resources to those that are going to benefit the most from them. Star Trek Technology When I look at the hospital, I’m hoping one day to walk into an exam room and it look like the sickbay like on Star Trek: Voyager or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. While sadly those dreams are a few years out yet. The ideas behind them are developing day by day. With wireless technology or the interconnected networks that make up the hospital infrastructure, it is important that patient data is protected from anyone not authorized to access it. While the tricorder doesn’t currently exist, the advances that we have made in the use of technology have made such a device a matter time, instead of an “if”. These devices will provide their own challenges as we continue to determine what information is needed and what is merely background noise. Some of this data will be essential to the new technology, and some will not, but what do you do with all those data-points that are not used? Databases Galore When a new technology is developed, it is usually with some essential benefits that it brings or it may fill a gap between two divergent technologies. Enabling the new technologies may require the creation of databases and the analysis of hundred and millions of data points. While these may be insignificant in and of themselves, they can in turn provide detailed information that could lead to new insight into potential threats to patients receiving treatment, they can also help to determine a cure to a disease that may not have been noticed before. The use of large databases such as Watson by IBM (www.IBM.com ) can lead to new ways of thinking about data. After all, we are continuing to create data points with our everyday activities and these when compared to others may show a correlation between unrelated events. These data points would be stored in these large databases and can be accessed for the wealth of information they contain. But how do we secure it? Increasing Security Needs All of these can cause an IT Security Professional to be restless at night, or have nightmares about having their data breached. The increased amounts of data that is being generated by healthcare technologies needs to be protected. Whether it is perimeter security, or securing the data at rest in your data center, you are now the custodian of these huge amounts of data. Security comes in many forms, but creating a robust program continues to be what it needed to deal with the issues of securing this data, both at rest and in transit. Monitoring information can be difficult to isolate in that it may be used in an immediate situation, such as; heart monitoring equipment or blood pressure cuff readings. These specific issues may cause the IT Security Professional angst and heartache, but it can be overcome. Summary Technology is continuing to advance in ways that we have never thought of before, and the advancement is being driven by data and the collection and analysis of that data. Whether it is on your wrist or connected monitors on your chest, data comes in many forms. It is the job of the IT Security Professional to help the company to protect that data. We have to provide guidance to the business in how they can be in compliance with current federal, state, or international regulations in regards to protecting patient information. The healthcare industry is at the forefront of making technological advances, and with new ways to capture data and providing detailed actionable information about it. These advances are going to continue to be developed over the coming years. These developments will continue to drive the IT Security Professional to being more of a data custodian than anything else. While data is needed in order to provide robust analytics, it is what happens to that data after the patient leaves the hospital or clinic that we have to worry about.
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