Reference no: EM132424187

1. Health data is sensitive and confidential; hence, it should be kept safe. Data security is one of the critical activities which has become challenging for many organizations (Frith, 2019). Due to technology advancements, people can save their health data online. Similarly, people are also able to share data with close friends or any other person of interest. Using online platforms to store the data has brought a lot of benefits. The primary benefit is the fact that individuals can share data with medical experts easily. By, this the medical experts will be able to assist the sick people if possible. The data is always accessible as long as one is authorized.

I read different articles that shared information concerning health data breaches. Various health organizations have been affected by data breaches (Garner, 2017). A good example is the University of Washington Medicine. This organization reported that 974,000 patients' data was affected. The attack was noticed by a patient who found some files containing personal information on public sites. The patient then notified the organization, which claimed that some employees made some errors, which led to the leakage. The files were accessible through Google, so the organization had to ask Google to remove the data. Fortunately, the files were removed from the search list, and this occurred in January 2019.

It was risky to let the files containing personal information available on the website (Ronquillo, Erik Winterholler, Cwikla, Szymanski & Levy, 2018). The organization was lucky that the data breach was not significant, and hence, the patients were not significantly affected. It is good to ensure that files containing health data are handled carefully to avoid some problems. In keeping the health data secure, it is good to ensure that the systems are well-protected. The systems can be protected by making use of firewalls which prevent unauthorized people from accessing them. During the data sharing process, a health organization should ensure that the information is encrypted. Encryption prevents unauthorized people from understanding the message that is being shared using different channels. Users should make sure that they use strong passwords.

2. Protection of patient's information is the top most priority of health care providers and professionals. Patient's health information contains personal data and their health conditions hence the federal laws requires to maintain security and privacy to safeguards health information. Privacy, as distinct from confidentiality, is viewed as the right of the individual client or patient to be let alone and to make decisions about how personal information is shared (Brodnik, 2012). Health data is usually stored on paper or electronically, in both these ways it is important to respect the privacy of the patients and hence follow policies to maintain security and privacy rules.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) is a major law introduced to ensure privacy, integrity and confidentiality of health data. Its main objective is to provide step by step instructions for providers and other health care organization in dealing with patient's personal health information.

Security of data is protecting health data and methods used to ensure privacy of health information and help health care professionals in secure transmission of data. As utilization of electronic wellbeing record frameworks developed, and transmission of wellbeing information to help charging turned into the standard, the requirement for administrative rules explicit to electronic wellbeing data turned out to be progressively evident.

Confidentiality is to ensure that medical professional having access to patients data hold health data in confidence. According to HIPPA and PHI rules any individual or the organization involved in disclosure of patient's health information is subjected to heavy fines and possible expulsion from license.

3. The HIPAA regulation are only for the US but the regulations which are part of the data regulations for hospital records but there are many regulations that enforced by other countries and international standards and committees one such standard is that helping the hospital records to regulated, secured and maintained properly. One such regulation is HL7 which is provided by the international committee which regulates hospital and patient records all over the world. These regulations make sure that patient privacy is also maintained and makes sure other countries don't get access to patients in other countries which will get access to weaponize patient data. The data of a country's citizens is very useful in the hands of other countries, so it is the duty of the HL7 regulation and committee to protect this. The regulations clearly instruct how the patient records are transmitted by API and how they should be encrypted and where the key should be stored and sent via a special communication which will help the patients to maintain the records safe and the hospital to continue to do their business.

The HL7 also makes the job for software vendors and providers who work in the health care industry can store and use the patient records in a uniform manner and access can be restricted to different groups. The applications which use HL7 need to be end to end encrypted and API keys need to come from the health care data providers like Cerner which will increase the credibility of the data

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