Patient Privacy and Security in E-Health

Author(s):  
Güney Gürsel

In the digital era, undoubtedly, e-health is a major contributor for decision support, education, research and management activities in healthcare. It provides tremendous benefits by easy store and access to data. This easiness brings a big problem together with the benefits. Users have easy access to vast amount of sensitive health data about patients. This may give way to misuse and abuse. That is why the concepts of privacy and security becomes very popular and point of major concern. This chapter is a descriptive study aimed to give principles of these concepts and invoke awareness about.

Author(s):  
Güney Gürsel

In the digital era, undoubtedly, e-health is a major contributor for decision support, education, research and management activities in healthcare. It provides tremendous benefits by easy store and access to data. This easiness brings a big problem together with the benefits. Users have easy access to vast amount of sensitive health data about patients. This may give way to misuse and abuse. That is why the concepts of privacy and security becomes very popular and point of major concern. This chapter is a descriptive study aimed to give principles of these concepts and invoke awareness about.


Author(s):  
Güney Gürsel

In the digital era, undoubtedly, e-health is a major contributor for decision support, education, research and management activities in healthcare. It provides tremendous benefits by easy store and access to data. This easiness brings a big problem together with the benefits. Users have easy access to vast amount of sensitive health data about patients. This may give way to misuse and abuse. That is why the concepts of privacy and security becomes very popular and point of major concern. This chapter is a descriptive study aimed to give principles of these concepts and invoke awareness about.


Author(s):  
Shirley Wong ◽  
Victoria Schuckel ◽  
Simon Thompson ◽  
David Ford ◽  
Ronan Lyons ◽  
...  

IntroductionThere is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.1 The Health Data Platform (HDP) will democratize British Columbia’s (population of approximately 4.6 million) health sector data by creating common enabling infrastructure that supports cross-organization analytics and research used by both decision makers and cademics. HDP will provide streamlined, proportionate processes that provide timelier access to data with increased transparency for the data consumer and provide shared data related services that elevate best practices by enabling consistency across data contributors, while maintaining continued stewardship of their data. HDP will be built in collaboration with Swansea University following an agile pragmatic approach starting with a minimum viable product. Objectives and ApproachBuild a data sharing environment that harnesses the data and the understanding and expertise about health data across academe, decision makers, and clinicians in the province by: Enabling a common harmonized approach across the sector on: Data stewardship Data access Data security and privacy Data management Data standards To: Enhance data consumer data access experience Increase process consistency and transparency Reduce burden of liberating data from a data source Build trust in the data and what it is telling us and therefore the decisions made Increase data accessibility safely and responsibly Working within the jurisdiction’s existing legislation, the Five Safes Privacy and Security Framework will be implemented, tailored to address the requirements of data contributors. ResultsThe minimum viable product will provide the necessary enabling infrastructure including governance to enable timelier access, safely to administrative data to a limited set of data consumers. The MVP will be expanded with another release planned for early 2021. Conclusion / ImplicationsCollaboration with Swansea University has enabled BC to accelerate its journey to increasing timelier access to data, safely and increasing the maturity of analytics by creating the enabling infrastructure that promotes collaboration and sharing of data and data approaches. 1 Margaret Wheatley


2011 ◽  
pp. 1795-1804
Author(s):  
Jingquan Li ◽  
Michael J. Shaw

The continued growth of healthcare information systems (HCIS) promises to improve quality of care, lower costs, and streamline the entire healthcare system. But the resulting dependence on electronic medical records (EMRs) has also kindled patient concern about who has access to sensitive medical records. Healthcare organizations are obliged to protect patient records under HIPAA. The purpose of this study is to develop a formal privacy policy to protect the privacy and security of EMRs. This article describes the impact of EMRs and HIPAA on patient privacy in healthcare. It proposes access control and audit log policies to safeguard patient privacy. To illustrate the best practices in the healthcare industry, this article presents the case of the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. The case demonstrates that it is critical for a healthcare organization to have a privacy policy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 205031212093483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Mallappallil ◽  
Jacob Sabu ◽  
Angelika Gruessner ◽  
Moro Salifu

Universally, the volume of data has increased, with the collection rate doubling every 40 months, since the 1980s. “Big data” is a term that was introduced in the 1990s to include data sets too large to be used with common software. Medicine is a major field predicted to increase the use of big data in 2025. Big data in medicine may be used by commercial, academic, government, and public sectors. It includes biologic, biometric, and electronic health data. Examples of biologic data include biobanks; biometric data may have individual wellness data from devices; electronic health data include the medical record; and other data demographics and images. Big data has also contributed to the changes in the research methodology. Changes in the clinical research paradigm has been fueled by large-scale biological data harvesting (biobanks), which is developed, analyzed, and managed by cheaper computing technology (big data), supported by greater flexibility in study design (real-world data) and the relationships between industry, government regulators, and academics. Cultural changes along with easy access to information via the Internet facilitate ease of participation by more people. Current needs demand quick answers which may be supplied by big data, biobanks, and changes in flexibility in study design. Big data can reveal health patterns, and promises to provide solutions that have previously been out of society’s grasp; however, the murkiness of international laws, questions of data ownership, public ignorance, and privacy and security concerns are slowing down the progress that could otherwise be achieved by the use of big data. The goal of this descriptive review is to create awareness of the ramifications for big data and to encourage readers that this trend is positive and will likely lead to better clinical solutions, but, caution must be exercised to reduce harm.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
F Estupiñán-Romero ◽  
J Gonzalez-García ◽  
E Bernal-Delgado

Abstract Issue/problem Interoperability is paramount when reusing health data from multiple data sources and becomes vital when the scope is cross-national. We aimed at piloting interoperability solutions building on three case studies relevant to population health research. Interoperability lies on four pillars; so: a) Legal frame (i.e., compliance with the GDPR, privacy- and security-by-design, and ethical standards); b) Organizational structure (e.g., availability and access to digital health data and governance of health information systems); c) Semantic developments (e.g., existence of metadata, availability of standards, data quality issues, coherence between data models and research purposes); and, d) Technical environment (e.g., how well documented are data processes, which are the dependencies linked to software components or alignment to standards). Results We have developed a federated research network architecture with 10 hubs each from a different country. This architecture has implied: a) the design of the data model that address the research questions; b) developing, distributing and deploying scripts for data extraction, transformation and analysis; and, c) retrieving the shared results for comparison or pooled meta-analysis. Lessons The development of a federated architecture for population health research is a technical solution that allows full compliance with interoperability pillars. The deployment of this type of solution where data remain in house under the governance and legal requirements of the data owners, and scripts for data extraction and analysis are shared across hubs, requires the implementation of capacity building measures. Key messages Population health research will benefit from the development of federated architectures that provide solutions to interoperability challenges. Case studies conducted within InfAct are providing valuable lessons to advance the design of a future pan-European research infrastructure.


MRS Bulletin ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 40-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.H. Westbrook ◽  
J.G. Kaufman ◽  
F. Cverna

Over the past 30 years we have seen a strong but uncoordinated effort to both increase the availability of numeric materials-property data in electronic media and to make the resultant mass of data more readily accessible and searchable for the end-user engineer. The end user is best able to formulate the question and to judge the utility of the answer for numeric property data inquiries, in contrast to textual or bibliographic data for which information specialists can expeditiously carry out searches.Despite the best efforts of several major programs, there remains a shortfall with respect to comprehensiveness and a gap between the goal of easy access to all the world's numeric databases and what can presently be achieved. The task has proven thornier and therefore much more costly than anyone envisioned, and computer access to data for materials scientists and engineers is still inadequate compared, for example, to the situation for molecular biologists or astronomers. However, progress has been made. More than 100 materials databases are listed and categorized by Wawrousek et al. that address several types of applications including: fundamental research, materials selection, component design, process control, materials identification and equivalency, expert systems, and education. Standardization is improving and access has been made more easy.In the discussion that follows, we will examine several characteristics of available information and delivery systems to assess their impact on the successes and limitations of the available products. The discussion will include the types and uses of the data, issues around data reliability and quality, the various formats in which data need to be accessed, and the various media available for delivery. Then we will focus on the state of the art by giving examples of the three major media through which broad electronic access to numeric properties has emerged: on-line systems, workstations, and disks, both floppy and CD-ROM. We will also cite some resources of where to look for numeric property data.


2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (S1) ◽  
pp. s105-s105 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Bloem ◽  
A. Miller

BackgroundRecent reports have highlighted the health disparities that women and other vulnerable populations experience following disasters. Humanitarian groups have struggled to implement effective measures to mitigate such disparities during subsequent disasters.ObjectivesTo analyze and provide practical solutions to mitigate barrier's to women's health encountered in Haiti following the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in January 2010.MethodsIn February 2010, a New York based team of emergency and international medicine specialists staffed the mobile emergency department in Port au Prince at L'Hôpital de l'Université d'Etat d'Haïti.ResultsCommon presentations included infectious diseases, traumatic injuries, chronic disease exacerbations, and follow-up for earthquake-associated conditions. Female gender-specific problems included vaginal infections, breast pain or masses, pregnancy-related concerns, and the effects of gender-based violence. Identified barriers to effective gender-specific care included communication, camp geography, supply availability, and poor inter-organization communication.DiscussionRecent disasters in Haiti, Pakistan, and elsewhere have challenged the international health community to provide gender-balanced healthcare in sub-optimal environments. Much room for improvement remains. Although our assessment team was gender-balanced, improved incorporation of Haitian personnel may have enhanced patient trust, and improved cultural sensitivity and communication. Camp geography should foster both patient privacy and security during sensitive examinations. This could have been improved upon by geographically separating men's and women's treatment areas and using a barrier screen to generate a more private examination environment. Women's health supplies must include an appropriate exam table, emergency obstetrical and midwifery supplies, urine dipsticks, and sanitary and reproductive health supplies. A referral system must be established for patients requiring a higher level-of-care. Lastly, improved inter-organization communication and promotion of resource pooling may improve treatment access and quality for select gender-based interventions.ConclusionSimple inexpensive modifications to organized post-disaster medical relief settings may dramatically reduce gender-based healthcare disparities.


Author(s):  
P. Alison Paprica ◽  
Michael Schull

ABSTRACTObjectivesHigh profile initiatives and reports highlight the potential benefits that could be realized by increasing access to health data, but do members of the general public share this view? The objective was to gain insight into the general public’s attitudes toward users and uses of administrative health data. ApproachIn fall 2015, four professionally-moderated focus groups with a total of 31 Ontario participants were conducted; two in Thunder Bay, two in Toronto. Participants were asked to review and comment on: general information about research based on linked administrative health data, a case study and models through which various users might use administrative health data. ResultsSupport for research based on linked administrative health data was strongest when people agreed with the purposes for which studies were conducted. The main concerns related to the security of personal data generally (e.g., Canada Revenue Agency hacking incidents were noted) and potentially inappropriate uses of health data, particularly by the private sector (e.g., strong reservations about studies done solely or primarily with a profit motive). Participants were reassured when provided with information about the process for removing or coding identifying information from health data, and about the oversight provided by the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. However, even when fully informed of privacy and security safeguards, participants still felt that risks unavoidably increase when there are more people and organizations accessing data. ConclusionsMembers of general public were generally supportive of research based on linked administrative health data but with conditions, particularly when the possibility of private sector research was discussed. Notably, and citing security concerns, focus group participants preferred models that had a limited number of individuals or organizations accessing data.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document