Security of the electronic medical record

Abstract

The shift to the networked world, that has been made possible by the explosive increase in the provision of broadband services not only to organizations but to individuals as well, allows making much better use of health information, but it also exposes this same information to a variety of threats that would not otherwise exist. These threats may, if not appropriately countered, seriously affect the security of health information and the privacy of the underlying subjects. Security and privacy technologies have grown tremendously over the past twenty years and still continue to be a field of intensive research. The result is an extensive arsenal of technological solutions to a variety of security problems. Nevertheless, healthcare organizations suffer regularly from information security breaches. This is due to the fact that security is more than erecting physical and electronic barriers; these are practically useless without an information security management system in place. This chapter presents a manager's roadmap for securing the electronic medical record.