Key Considerations For Digital Transformation As It Accelerates Patient Care

By Daniel Raskin, VP of strategy, ForgeRock

It’s an exciting time in the healthcare industry as it is being reborn for today’s digital world. I remember a time when a courier would need to send over my charts from my general practitioner before I could meet with the specialist. Things are changing – now x-rays, MRIs, payments, new patient records, and insurance claims are all digitized, accelerating the way patients are served. With the goal of improving patient care in mind, new challenges need to be addressed, including security, compliance and privacy challenges. We offer three things to consider about the digital experience in the healthcare industry.

Will sharing healthcare records really benefit patients?

The concept is great – improve quality of life with digital transformation. It’s reassuring to know that doctors and specialists can quickly collaborate and share patient health records. With healthcare wearables, patients can also improve how they are tracking vitals and calories lost, and store information about emergency contacts as well as allergies. But how do healthcare providers ensure that they have a comprehensive view of each patient?

Today’s digital world is characterized not by thousands but by millions of people, applications and things. Availity, one of the largest healthcare information networks, is a good example. The Availity Health Information Network extends to more than 575,000 active providers, 2,700 hospitals, 675 vendor partners and associated health plans nationwide.

Total Administrative Services Corporation (TASC), the nation’s largest privately held third-party administrator, is another example. With its investment in digital services, TASC has visibility into more than a million end-users, and it can create a single view of customers to deliver highly integrated services.

Will my health records be kept safe and confidential?

While digital healthcare initiatives will help improve the efficiency of service, patient privacy is the number-one thing on people’s minds. Nine million health records were compromised in 2013, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In the first half of 2014, nearly 12 million records were breached.

Experts estimate that compared to credit-card information, healthcare data is 50 times more valuable on the black market. This is due to the fact that credit cards can easily be cancelled, and technology improvements such as PINs and chip technology for credit cards will further decrease their attractiveness to cyber criminals. However, healthcare records can be used to open new financial accounts, commit insurance fraud for healthcare services and more. Analysis conducted on HHS records revealed that the majority of the compromised records are a result of theft (17.4 million people), followed by data loss (7.2 million people), while hacking and unauthorized access account for 5.5 million compromised records.

Ensuring patient privacy will continue to be important as more digital strategies are rolled out in the healthcare industry. Not only will patient trust decrease but also this year for the first time organizations will be subject to fines if Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) regulations are violated.

Do only the right people have access to my healthcare records?

One way to help ensure patient privacy is by ensuring that only the right people can access the information they need to serve patients. Simple usernames and passwords are ineffective in any industry, and healthcare is no different. Organizations should look beyond admitting users based on credentials and really focus on the context. This goes for patients, doctors or admins. Patients want to access healthcare records, communicate with healthcare providers and look at billing history. Doctors want to be able to access patient records and collaborate with other healthcare professionals. Admin wants to be able to process billing and insurance claims. The challenge of ensuring privacy is exacerbated by the use of mobile devices and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies, as well as by cloud computing, medical devices and healthcare wearables.

Gartner cites context-rich systems as one of its Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2015, stating that “by understanding the context of a user request, applications can not only adjust their security response but also adjust how information is delivered to the user, greatly simplifying an increasingly complex computing world.” Gartner also states that “context-aware security is an early application of this new capability, but others will emerge.” Context-rich systems can provide significant value for security and the patient experience. A doctor treating a patient at a hospital, and who needs to access patient records, should be granted access. A person attempting to access insurance records after business hours and from outside the country should raise suspicion and be further vetted before admittance.

Digital transformation in the healthcare industry is radically improving patient care. However, not carefully taking into account security, privacy and compliance requirements can leave a healthcare organization vulnerable. Finding the right platform, one that provides a unified view of patients while factoring in security, compliance and privacy, is critical for successfully digitally transforming a healthcare organization today while ensuring flexibility for the future.