Vaultara Blog

Technology needs in healthcare are constantly evolving. Security, accessibility, and compliance are at the top of everyone's priority list because patient privacy is a must-have, but having the right information at the right time is of equal importance. With the recent popularity of cloud services in several other industries, healthcare organizations must decide which of their systems - if any - are appropriate for the cloud. In the case of medical imaging, CDs and DVDs can be a cumbersome and unreliable method for sharing images. For this reason, many hospitals and imaging centers have begun looking into on-premise or cloud solutions to streamline their image sharing efforts. As with any important decision, they must weigh the pros and cons of each option. The top three things to consider when selecting an on-premise or cloud-based medical image sharing software are cost, data, and control. Let’s look at each in a bit more detail...  

Healthcare data is information that is collected to keep track of a patient’s health, medical conditions, injuries, illnesses, and treatments. But there is actually a wider scope for medical information to benefit the community, beyond diagnosis. While data can be passed between medical professionals to cater to the needs of the patient, sharing that same data with a wider audience can enhance medical research and education. This kind of medical data is currently known as information for 'secondary use' - i.e. for additional research purposes that fall outside of the original intentions of use.

Unstructured medical data, such as lab results, imaging reports, clinical data, and the output from medical devices often gets stored and unused, creating more of a hindrance to medical facilities than an aid. Anonymizing this data can free up existing stores of information, effectively converting it into useful intelligence. A more in-depth understanding of individual patient ailments and large illness groups alike can lead to more efficient care practices, not to mention cheaper healthcare costs for both patients and medical facilities. Education and research are undoubtedly the biggest areas that can benefit from the use of de-identified data.

Encryption is an imperative security measure for all healthcare organizations; however, many have yet to adopt it because HIPAA doesn't enforce any sort of encryption standard for protected health information (PHI). Instead, the HIPAA Security Rule classifies data encryption as “addressable” rather than “required,” meaning each organization if left to decide if implementation would be reasonable and appropriate. Leaving a critical security measure like this up for interpretation and discretion does not give patient privacy the priority it deserves. This leaves a dangerous opening for hackers who can easily intercept personal data being sent to a facility or being stored on unprotected servers and devices. Because PHI is frequently stored and transmitted in electronic in format, the inherent security risks that come along with that must be addressed.