Health IT, hacking, and cybersecurity: National trends in data breaches of protected health information

Abstract

Objective: The rapid adoption of health information technology (IT) coupled with growing reports of ransom-ware, and hacking has made cybersecurity a priority in health care. This study leverages federal data in order to better understand current cybersecurity threats in the context of health IT. Materials and Methods: Retrospective observational study of all available reported data breaches in the United States from 2013 to 2017, downloaded from a publicly available federal regulatory database. Results: There were 1512 data breaches affecting 154 415 257 patient records from a heterogeneous distribution of covered entities (P