The healthcare sector has been using cloud solutions at an ever-increasing rate for some time now for a seemingly endless number of reasons. A few of these justifications center on enhancing patient outcomes and offering present and future patients the best care possible. Additional factors include the demands of the market and the requirement to treat more patients with the same or even less resources.
Unsurprisingly, security has been a major factor in the increasing migration of healthcare IT systems to the cloud. Many healthcare organizations manage vast volumes of extremely sensitive patient data; jeopardizing this data would negate the many advantages of moving to the cloud for the healthcare industry.
A Miscellany of Acronyms
There are several common acronyms that one must become familiar with in order to start navigating issues pertaining to healthcare IT and its cloud migration. For your reference, the most significant of them are listed below, along with some basic information:
- The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a 1996 law that creates national guidelines for the security of medical records in the digital age. The HIPAA Security Rule and the HIPAA Privacy Rule make up its two primary sections.
- HHS, or the Department of Health and Human Services, is the government organization responsible for creating HIPAA.
- The Office for Civil Rights, or OCR, is in charge of upholding HIPAA’s security and privacy regulations.
- PHI and ePHI, or protected health information and electronically protected health information, are terms used to describe healthcare IT.
- Electronic health records, or EHRs
- The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) was a piece of legislation enacted in 2009 with the goal of incentivizing the broad use of electronic health records (EHRs) through financial rewards.
The Ideal Situation
In a perfect world, a hospital would discover that moving at least portion of its IT system to the cloud would significantly improve day-to-day operations. They would also understand that the HITECH Act would allow them to receive an incentive. To manage their move, they would refer to HIPAA regulations and work with HIPAA-compliant IT providers. It would take some time, but everything would proceed smoothly because of the security and privacy policies.
In Reality
The reality is very different when it comes to healthcare companies, cloud, and cybersecurity, as several incidents of healthcare data breaches have taught us.
Some claim that the HITECH and HIPAA Acts, which are insufficiently detailed and comprehensive, constitute the beginning of this. For example, the HIPAA rules do not specifically include two-factor authentication, even though it should be a necessity. Actually, there is no mention of any specific security precautions that must be implemented in the rules.
According to the recommendations, covered businesses and business associates are permitted to employ whatever security measures that enable them to apply the standards in a reasonable and suitable manner.
This strategy may appear to some to rely too heavily on the knowledge of individuals (hospital administrators and other decision-makers) who are frequently not very knowledgeable about cybersecurity.
It is important to note that the HITECH and HIPAA regulations are not all that horrible. In actuality, they manage an incredibly complex subject pretty well.
Furthermore, compared to what one might see in a business setting, the typical healthcare IT infrastructure is far more complex. Regular transmission of ePHI between healthcare providers and insurers necessitates the use of a variety of tools and protocols, each with inherent vulnerabilities.
In addition, there are an excessive number of people with varying degrees of access to private information and an endless number of terminals from which they obtain it. It is far more difficult to provide adequate security in light of all of this.
It is clear that there are substantial issues when you consider the several cloud service providers, each with unique risks.
Not Everything Is Lost
Fortunately, not everything ends in disaster. Actually, a wonderful place to start when it comes to ensuring cloud security for healthcare enterprises is with the HIPAA and HITECH rules. In actuality, the cloud service providers have greater cybersecurity expertise than the more conventional in-house experts who once oversaw cybersecurity for specific companies.
Additionally, significant progress has been made in warning healthcare professionals about the risks associated with not taking cybersecurity seriously, particularly with regard to monitoring the devices used to access HIT cloud systems.
Final Word
The future of healthcare is in the cloud, as this team from Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine is so masterfully illustrating. Guidelines that specify the path to take are just as important as cybersecurity that protects the data and all parties involved.
Things are undoubtedly heading in the right way, and it won’t be long until we hear some very amazing news about healthcare that is made possible by cloud computing.
