If implemented by medical institutions, electronic health records can prove to be very beneficial to doctors, patients, and other healthcare professionals. However, fears regarding patient records’ security and privacy may drive a lot of health facilities to utilize EMRs at a slightly lower rate. One of the major issues of EMR is protecting a large number of confidential health records in several locations and formats.
Nowadays, the most significant challenge to electronic health record implementation is finding the best ways to actually assure privacy and security around records. Consequently, it is critical for healthcare facilities to make efforts and find strategies to safeguard electronic medical records (Kruse, 2017). Cryptography, for example, provides the confidentiality of personal health information in clinical computer systems (Kruse, 2017). Encryption, in particular, has improved the safety and confidentiality of electronic health records during the exchange of patient data.
Additional prominent security measures, such as cryptography, involve cloud technology and antivirus programs. With technological improvements, cloud technology and antiviruses have now been widely examined for ease of use and incorporation into electronic health record systems (Kruse, 2017). Cloud computing providers enable the electronic transmission and exchange of data via storage, programs, and processing capabilities (Kruse, 2017). With the help of such technologies, healthcare institutions may reduce the expense of implementing an electronic health record system by shifting control and the responsibility of management, while also combining cryptographic techniques to assure safe cloud connectivity.
Hence, health information privacy and security are absolutely vital to electronic health record systems. The most essential data is stored in these systems, and they might be quite vulnerable. As a result, multiple efforts are needed in order to ensure that patient confidentiality is kept safe. Therefore, the main ways to protect the data are with the help of cryptography, cloud technology, and antivirus programs.
Reference
Kruse, C. S., Smith, B., Vanderlinden, H., & Nealand, A. (2017). Security techniques for the electronic health records. Journal of Medical System, 41(8), 1-9.