Healthcare IT News For VARs — February 28, 2014
News articles highlight continuing concern over health records data breaches, with one in five healthcare organizations having experienced a security breach. Also, Health Catalyst provides information on the Healthcare Analytics Adoption Model.
1 In 5 Healthcare Providers Have Experienced A Security Breach
A Health IT Outcomes article reports the results of the 2013 HIMSS Security Survey, which states one in five healthcare providers have experienced a security breach, and one in eight have experienced a case of medical identity theft. The article cites deficits in aspects of security programs as contributing factors.
Health IT Outcomes also features the article, “HIT Security Compromised At ‘Alarming' Frequency.” The article cites a study by Norse and SANS that shows “critical information assets are poorly protected and are often compromised” in healthcare organizations. Sam Glines, CEO of Norse, says, “The sheer number of attacks being perpetrated against healthcare organizations is overwhelming, while the defenses in place are not nearly enough to neutralize them.”
White Paper Provides Guidance On Healthcare Analytics Adoption Model
Health Catalyst has released a new white paper that explains the Healthcare Analytics Adoption Model. The paper provides:
- A framework for evaluating the industry’s adoption of analytics
- A roadmap for organizations to measure their own progress toward analytic adoption
- A framework for evaluating vendor products
Patient Direct Access To Medical Test Results Could Be Security Challenge
An Information Week article looks at possible risks to security and privacy created by the new Department of Health and Human Services decision that patients can access their medical test results directly from the laboratory. The article challenges IT departments to work closely with the laboratory’s staff members who will share results with patients to ensure security and to protect data that is stored, reported, and transferred.
Healthcare IT Talking Points
In “A Marriage Of Healthcare & Payment Processing” Business Solutions editor-in-chief Mike Monocello points out that healthcare is a great market for payment processing. The March issue of Business Solutions, which includes a healthcare focus, includes the article Discover Payment Processing Sales Opportunities Outside Of Retail, with comments from executives from JetPay, Mercury, and TSYS.
A Government Health IT article asks “Is Big Data already outpacing health IT”? The article quotes Joe Gray, associate director for translational research at the Knight Cancer Institute at the Oregon Health & Science University. Gray explains that genomic cancer study can lead to treatments best suited to a specific patient, but IT hasn’t kept pace with the data — Gray says “more than 100 GBs for a single tumor. Applied to almost 2 million U.S. cancer patients per year and 14 million cancer survivors, that totals tens to hundreds of petabytes of data per year.” Clinical and genomic data sets could be analyzed to provide a direction for cancer treatment. Gray says, “The opportunity is there. It is going to require standardization in ways that we are not now doing. But the promise is sufficiently large that we can get there.”
For more news and insights, visit BSMinfo’s Healthcare IT Resource Center.