E-Medical Records and Privacy
I’m here at CES Gov 2009 today and have heard a lot of interesting things about the challenges that the move to e-records poses for the healthcare sector, specifically around issues of privacy and security.
One of the conference speakers Ian Liddell-Grainger, a UK Member of Parliament, has commented on the challenges that the UK has faced in this same effort.
This is all very timely as today we heard from President-Elect Barack Obama, as he issued a statement on what he is calling the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan which includes a plan to renew focus on the move to e-medical records.
This was also an initiative which the outgoing administration supported, including the signing of an executive order to that effect. However, the statement issued by President-Elect Obama today set’s forth a more aggressive time line five years for all Americans to have e-medical records.
Security and privacy are important concerns as we make a move to e-medical records and our already overburdened health care system will have to find a way to address those initiatives.
HIPAA is a regulation which protects a patient’s privacy well in the paper record world, however it’s important that as the move to e-medical records happens that we review what our health care organizations consider when they think of privacy.
All of this comes, as I read today on Infoworld.com about a data breach stat from this past year, that says that 35 million data records were breached last year in the US.
Here is the excerpt from that story:
More than 35 million data records were breached in 2008 in the United States, a figure that underscores continuing difficulties in securing information, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). It documents 656 breaches in 2008 from a range of well-known U.S. companies and government entities, compared to 446 breaches in 2007, a 47 percent increase. Information about the breaches was collected by tracking media reports and the disclosures companies are required to make by law.
A recent article in Information Week suggested that the incoming administration will fund health care IT at higher levels. And a look a bit further into the technology agenda of the Office of the President-Elect shows the intention to
“Invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records.”
It’s important that not only the policies but also a significant portion of those dollars go toward implementing the technologies available to protect our privacy.
