Modern-day cyber criminals utilize every resource possible to launch attacks, one of which has been publicly available until now. Google had just overhauled its personal information policy, especially for the healthcare industry, resulting in the removal of private medical records from its search results.
Hospitals and healthcare organizations are usually the first victims of malware attacks. WannaCry ransomware -- malicious software that encrypts files until the victim decides to pay the Bitcoin ransom -- took advantage of this when it hit several healthcare institutions last month.
Two trends have been rising in popularity in tandem: HIPAA compliance audits and social media. Obviously both of these are far too important to be correlated directly, but they do intersect with each other. Social media tends to push people toward oversharing, and that’s definitely something you don’t want when hosting regulated patient data.
Physicians in certain parts of the world still make house calls, but they’re a rare breed. Today, most patients either go to a neighborhood clinic or hospital, or make a quick trip to a pharmacy for instant relief. Patients who prefer to get treated in the comfort of their own home have another option too: telemedicine.
No healthcare provider today can operate without robust technology backing them. That doesn’t mean they have to spend excessively on IT infrastructure they have to manage themselves. One of those tech expenses include costly healthcare software, complete with on-premise components that a healthcare company will be much better off outsourcing.
Even if notable punishments and fines for HIPAA non-compliance have only been doled out over the last 6 years, data privacy regulations have been around for 14. And with each passing year, these rules evolve in ways that make it near impossible to keep up without an expert on hand.
Can you think of an industry that hasn’t improved because of advanced technology? It’s hard to come up with one; much easier to think about where technology has made our lives better. A good example would be the medical world, where everything from robotic surgeries to electronic health records (EHR) -- plus these five integrated healthcare technologies -- are leading to more patient-friendly futures.
Computer technology firm Symantec is warning consumers that an infamous trojan virus still targets healthcare data across the United States and around the world. This infamous piece of malware hides among image files downloaded with pirated software.
In this day and age, evolving technologies surround and influence people and businesses the world over. Technology has advanced by massive leaps and bounds in recent years, ushering in convenient developments like autonomous self-driving cars. However, in terms of industries for which artificial intelligence (AI) can do the most good, healthcare is at the top of the list.
For hospitals, readmission rates are a key performance indicator (KPI). They indicate the quality of care your practice provides and what sort of resources you need in reserve to avoid overcrowding. Some legislation even reduces government payouts to hospitals with high readmission rates.
