Why the cloud is the safest place to store medical records
As with all medical practices, big-name hospitals like Boston General and Stanford Hospital are bound by HIPAA, the federally-mandate Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
Among other measures, HIPAA gives strict regulations for the sharing, transporting, storing and accessing of patients' medical records.
As responsible medical facilities, hospitals can almost guarantee that patient records are secure.
Data breaches in the news
Still, many patients are unnerved by the sheer number of data breaches covering the fronts of news sites.
RELATED TOPIC: 4 reasons to take your medical records to the cloud
Just recently, the United States Federal Government had to admit to having thousands of federal workers' data compromised in one of the brashest data hacks in history. The perpetrators remain at large.
Patients nervous about records
It's harder than ever for hospitals to calm the nerves of patients in the wake of these headline grabbing stories.
As the article “Easing patient security fears about electronic medical records” states, this is no small task, and hospitals are taking it as seriously as they take patients' health in general.
Though by law all medical records have to be digitized and stored on the cloud for easy and speedy accessibility, the myriad security fronts in place of that data are multitudinous and redundant.
In other words, there is not just one firewall, or one password, or one of anything.
There are duplications, and a variety of differing digital blockades that make it near impossible for hackers to get in.
RELATED TOPIC: 7 HIPAA security risk myths debunked
Records not a target
Another small fact that should put patients' minds at ease is that hackers are looking for money, not medical information.
Medical information is stored separately from any credit card data or personal banking information.
To target hospital data, hackers would only garner a patient's history of diabetes, or the resulting diagnosis from an MRI. This kind of information is virtually useless in terms of turning it into any kind of money-making scheme.
So in fact, medical data isn't even a realistic target for hackers who are out to steal money, which they are.
Why HIPAA exists
Though it's true that most data breaches these days are breaches of electronic data and not paper records, there are so many reasons why hospital patient records are not on the list of usual targets.
RELATED TOPIC: How cloud computing is changing the health care IT industry
And if they were, HIPAA's safeguards are in place to ensure that there are layers upon layers of protection so that medical data is safe.
In fact, that's one of the main reasons why HIPAA was passed into law. Helping to make sure that patients and their teams of medical professionals all have access to pertinent information is paramount to HIPAA's mission statement.
There is virtually no better place for a patient's medical records than safely stored on the cloud.
About the author: Kate Supino is widely published and writes extensively about best business practices.
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