patient privacy

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Ebola, EHRs, And The Blame Game

Deborah Peel | The Health Care Blog | October 23, 2014

It’s time to think carefully and look at the large systems (human and technical), institutions, and individuals that contributed to Mr. Duncan’s death. Systems should be designed to protect people and prevent human errors...

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For Hospitals, There's No App For That

Jenny Gold | Kaiser Health News | December 26, 2011

Hospitals are usually eager to embrace the latest medical technology, but the road to deploying tablet computers has been bumpy. iPads have been available since April 2010, but less than one percent of hospitals have fully functional tablet systems, according to Jonathan Mack, director of clinical research and development at the West Wireless Health Institute, a San Diego-based nonprofit f Read More »

Guardtime Secures Over a Million Estonian Healthcare Records on the Blockchain

Bylan Allison | IBTimes | March 3, 2016

Guardtime, a cyber-security provider that uses blockchain systems to ensure the integrity of data, is partnering with the Estonian e-Health Authority to secure over a million health care records. Guardtime uses Keyless Signature Infrastructure (KSI), a blockchain technology that provides massive-scale data authentication without reliance on centralised trust authorities. Unlike traditional approaches that depend on asymmetric key cryptography, KSI uses only hash-function cryptography, allowing verification to rely only on the security of hash functions and the availability of a public ledger...

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Hackers Are Coming for Your Healthcare Records -- Here’s Why

Lucas Mearian | Computer World | June 30, 2016

Data stolen from a bank quickly becomes useless once the breach is discovered and passcodes are changed. But data from the healthcare industry, which includes both personal identities and medical histories, can live a lifetime. Cyberattacks will cost hospitals more than $305 billion over the next five years and one in 13 patients will have their data compromised by a hack, according to industry consultancy Accenture. And a study by the Brookings Institution predicts that one in four data breaches this year will hit the healthcare industry...

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Halamka Sets Healthcare Innovation Priorities for 2017

As we begin 2017, what should be the focus of our work over the next year?... Regardless of the policies, repeals, and delays of the Trump administration, we’ll still need to optimize usability and support the four goals of value-based purchasing - quality measurement, total medical expense management, practice process improvement and technology adoption. BIDMC has already created a prototype of groupware documentation and we should complete our next generation inpatient documentation solution by mid 2017. Part of that work incorporates open source secure texting as part of the medical record. We’re also piloting Google’s G-suite so that our stakeholders can store/share, collaborate, and communicate on any device from anywhere using only a browser...

Health Care Data Breaches Have Hit 30M Patients And Counting

Jason Millman | The Washington Post | August 19, 2014

Welcome to Health Reform Watch, Jason Millman's regular look at how the Affordable Care Act is changing the American health-care system — and being changed by it...

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HHS Announces Synthetic Health Data Challenge Winners

Press Release | US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) | September 21, 2021

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) today announced $100,000 in total awards to six winners of the Synthetic Health Data Challenge (Challenge). Synthetic health data (i.e., data that is artificially created to mimic real-world data), is important to researchers, health IT developers, and informaticians, among others, who need data to test new ideas until access to secure and actual clinical data is available.

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How Cyber Hardening Can Protect Patient Privacy And Treatment

The abundance of internet-connected devices that collect and share patient data has greatly increased the “attack surface” (where an attacker inserts or extracts data) and number of possible vulnerabilities within a system. Now that medical devices can connect to home-based routers, public Wi-Fi or cellular networks to relay data to hospitals, specialists, and care providers. In addition, the software in those devices lacks cybersecurity and can be updated and reprogrammed remotely. Thus, sensitive patient information is even more prone to data breaches, and the safety of the devices can be compromised. Recent supply chain compromises, and the migration of health applications and platforms to the cloud, also add to the threat equation. This article looks at why the medical community is so vulnerable and suggests how it can better protect life-saving equipment and sensitive data from unprecedented cyberattacks.

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How Data Brokers Make Money Off Your Medical Records

Adam Tanner | Scientific American | February 1, 2016

A growing number of companies specialize in gathering longitudinal information from hundreds of millions of hospitals' and doctors' records, as well as from prescription and insurance claims and laboratory tests. Pooling all these data turns them into a valuable commodity. Other businesses are willing to pay for the insights that they can glean from such collections to guide their investments in the pharmaceutical industry, for example, or more precisely tailor an advertising campaign promoting a new drug...

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Interoperability Hurdles Impede ACOs

Joseph Conn | Modern Healthcare | January 20, 2016

For accountable care organizations, a lack of interoperability between their health information technology systems and those of providers outside their ACO is the No. 1 challenge they face, cited by 79% of respondents to a survey of 68 ACOs by group purchaser and performance-improvement company Premier and health IT collaborative eHealth Initiative...

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Johnson & Johnson Announces Clinical Trial Data Sharing Agreement With Yale School of Medicine

Press Release | Johnson & Johnson, Yale School of Medicine | January 30, 2014

Johnson & Johnson today announced that its subsidiary, Janssen Research and Development, LLC, has entered into a novel agreement with Yale School of Medicine's Open Data Access (YODA) Project that will extend its commitment to sharing clinical trials data to enhance public health and advance science and medicine.  

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King's College Accelerates Synthetic Brain 3D Image Creation Using Open Source AI Models and Software Powered by Cambridge-1 Supercomputer

Press Release | King’s College London | July 26, 2021

King College London, along with partner hospitals and university collaborators, unveiled new details today about one of the first projects on Cambridge-1, the United Kingdom's most powerful supercomputer. The Synthetic Brain Project is focused on building deep learning models that can synthesize artificial 3D MRI images of human brains. These models can help scientists understand what a human brain looks like across a variety of ages, genders, and diseases. The AI models were developed by King's and NVIDIA data scientists and engineers as part of The London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare research funded by UK Research and Innovation and a Wellcome Flagship Programme (in collaboration with University College London).

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Len's Lens: Privacy and Personal Health Information

J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, MD | MedPage Today | December 16, 2015

So you are a health professional or knowledgeable consumer and think you understand the issues surrounding privacy and exchange of personal health information? So did I, until I recently became a patient and had the temerity (or is that foolishness and patience?) to actually read the consent when I went to the outpatient surgical center for a cancer screening procedure. And what I read was -- to say the least -- disturbing. When it came to sharing my health information, there were no middle options: either it could be shared with other exchanges, vendors, consultants, and others nationwide, or I wouldn't be able to get access when I really needed it -- especially in an emergency situation...

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Life-Giving Software Should Be Open: GNOME Foundation Chief

Sam Varghese | iTWire | January 23, 2012

Software that controls vital human functions should always be open source, else it could prove to be a danger to one's existence, the executive director of the GNOME Foundation says. Read More »

Military Health System Study Analyzes Privacy Challenges

Patrick Ouellette | HealthITSecurity.com | October 1, 2013

Considering the privacy issues with the Veterans Affairs (VA) recently, military health data privacy has been a hot-button issue in the healthcare sector lately. It seems as though the Military Health System concurs with the notion that a more formalized privacy procedures need to be put in place. Read More »