Concatenation is one of those lovely English words that express far more than its simpler synonyms: sequence, series or chain of events. Perhaps we have experienced that concatenation of data breaches which connect and demonstrate a critical mass that motivate healthcare organizations, including insurers, to ensure that data security and privacy gets primacy in HIT. Our Readers know we’ve been on the case since 2010; we’ve been noting Ponemon Institute and ID Experts studies since then. While simple, straightforward theft can be the cause of smaller breaches and not part of a Big Hack, it’s not as Three Stooges or... Continue Reading
Search Results for data security
An important intervention on mHealth from the EU Data Protection Supervisor
...encourage privacy by design and privacy settings by default; and enhance the security of the technologies used. The document itself contains much of interest. To this editor, who has heard many people poo-poo the importance of wellbeing data, it was good to see: Lifestyle and well-being data will, in general, be considered health data, when they are processed in a medical context (e.g. the app is used upon advice of a patient’s doctor) or where information regarding an individual’s health may reasonably be inferred from the data (in itself, or combined with other information), especially when the purpose of the... Continue Reading
Do startups truly threaten the ‘healthcare establishment’?
...with a great idea’. **The new standard is ‘where does it fit’— into workflow, healthcare business model, saving money, improving measurable outcome goals, knitting together data and communications–and more–and does it solve real, measurable problems. **FDA and government involvement, security/hacking threats and that your IP really does need to be protected further favors some critical mass and caution. The smarter parts of the Healthcare Establishment are buying innovation: note the purchases and alliances recently made by Humana, Anthem, GE (Ventures-StartUp Health and Care Innovations’ certifications), Optum (Alere Health) and Medtronic (Cardiocom), Mayo Clinic backing Better, and HealthSpot/Xerox (only ‘to hand’... Continue Reading
“Mainstreaming medical apps; reducing NHS costs; improving patient outcomes” – a brief summary
...introduced Knox, as a security improvement Android on phones to prevent interference with vital apps.) Richard Brady, Specialty Registrar General Surgery, Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, updating his previous year’s excellent presentation on “bad apps” observed that only 40% of the 40k “healthcare” apps on iTunes have been shown to be genuine health apps. The first of the deadly sins of app developers he described this year was inequity, the second was lack of expertise employed/quoted, and the third was plagiarism. The fourth was bias or other commercial interests, the fifth was lack of accuracy, & errors, the sixth was lack of... Continue Reading
Ford disconnects research on heart attack-sensing car seat
...apps. German Engineering not to be outdone, BMW had also toyed with a stress app in its steering wheel to monitor perspiration. This would be of great use on a hot day or in average city traffic. The Google/Apple/Tesla hype, and threat to the main automakers, has turned to the self-driving car, which has its own advantages (enabling mobility for those who cannot or no longer can drive, an adjunct to urban transit) and disadvantages (hacking and for the truly paranoid, limitations on mobility equivalent to geo-fencing). Once all about apps, it’s now about autonomous cars, security, privacy and managing... Continue Reading
10th Anniversary Article 1: The Next Ten Years of Telecare
...looks after OUR data and who can then look at this information. Security will be paramount but so will be the nature of the organisation which controls the particular ‘clouds’ in which they reside. They need to be trusted, and that means having a reputation that is not driven primarily by a need to satisfy the bottom line, the shareholders or other external stakeholders. Patients, and their families, need to be convinced that the guardians of their personal health data are not going to rip them off, leak their details to a life insurance company, nor give the heads up... Continue Reading
58 percent of health data breaches due to simple theft, not hacking: JAMA
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/keep-calm-and-encrypt-your-data-5.png” thumb_width=”150″ /] Criminal activity is the cause of nearly 6 out of 10 data breaches, according to a study published in JAMA last week (subscription required). Cyberbreaches–the infamous hacking attacks–produce breaches in the millions, but the far more typical and frequent breach, if smaller, is caused by simple theft of records–electronic and paper. HealthLeaders We’ve reported previously that stolen records (over 500) have ranged from laptops to paper records as landfill and even old-style X-rays in dead storage sought after for mercury content. So if Hackermania is not always running wild, except when it is, how to keep... Continue Reading
IBM Watson Health adds 2 companies, three partners, moves to Boston and into the cloud
...Johnson & Johnson will be working with Watson on pre/post-operative coaching and education and Medtronic on diabetes management using data from Medtronic devices. IBM is in agreement to acquire two growing data analytics businesses: Cleveland-based Explorys (clinical and financial intelligence and analysis) and Dallas-based Phytel (provider-based population health management). Explorys is a Cleveland Clinic spinoff that has an Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) platform and claims one of the largest healthcare databases in the world covering 15 percent of the US population. Phytel is particularly hot as a platform for practice care management under the new Medicare Chronic Care Management reimbursement... Continue Reading
HIMSS Monday highlights
HIMSS is the largest US healthcare conference in the world, and Neil Versel, who has just joined the staff of MedCityNews, reported that registrations in this year’s event in Chicago were in excess of 40,000. He has a 37 minute interview with HIMSS Executive Vice President Carla Smith where they touch on CMS, Meaningful Use, EHR interoperability, data security, patient engagement and the empowered patient such as E-Patient Dave deBronkart (who will also be at The King’s Fund Digital Health conference in June). HIMSS is also showcasing on the show floor mobile health, interoperability, cybersecurity, disaster preparedness, intelligent health and... Continue Reading
“Data moves at the speed of trust”–RWJF report
The report issued today by the influential Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), ‘Data for Health: Learning What Works’ advocates a fresh approach to health data through greater education on the value/importance of sharing PHI, improved security and privacy safeguards and investing in community data infrastructure. If the above quote and the first two items sound contradictory, perhaps they are, but current ‘strict’ privacy regulations (that’s you, HIPAA), data siloing and the current state of the art in security aren’t stemming Hackermania (or sheer bad data hygiene and security procedures). Based on three key themes, the RWJF is recommending a suite... Continue Reading
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