patient privacy

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10 Promising Technologies Assisting the Future of Medicine and Healthcare

Bertalan Mesko | LinkedIn Pulse | March 10, 2016

Technology will not solve the problems that healthcare faces globally today. And the human touch alone is not enough any more, therefore a new balance is needed between using disruptive innovations but still keeping the human interaction between patients and caregivers. Here are 10 technologies and trends that could enable this...

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16% of Healthcare Stakeholders Plan to Use Blockchain by 2017

Jennifer Bresnick | Health IT Analytics | January 4, 2017

Blockchain may have entered the healthcare lexicon in 2016 as a somewhat fuzzy concept, but the innovative method of securing and validating data transactions is poised to take the industry by storm over the next twelve months, according to an international survey conducted by IBM. Sixteen percent of the 200 healthcare executives participating in the poll have concrete plans to implement a commercial blockchain solution within their organizations in 2017, while an additional 56 percent are likely to follow by the end of the decade...

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4 Lesser Known Problems With EHRs

Marla Durben Hirsch | Fierce EMR | April 14, 2014

Although the healthcare industry continues to transition from paper to electronic health records, many patients and even some providers remain unaware of their imperfections, according to a recent post in the Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch.  The article, which outlines "10 things your medical records won't say" flags several problems endemic to EHRs that have received a lot of media attention, such as high costs and physicians' dissatisfaction with the systems.

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A Health Hack Wake-Up Call

Niam Yaraghi | US News & World Report | April 1, 2016

Hospitals went digital almost overnight, but they neglected to prioritize patient data protection. U.S. hospitals appear to be under a new type of IT hacking attack: crypto-ransomware. Hackers have changed their approach and instead of stealing patient data, they are now locking down the computer systems of hospitals and asking for a ransom, in bitcoin, in order to allow hospitals to have access to their own computers...

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Adrian Gropper Calls for "HIE of One" to Protect Patient Privacy

Leonard Kish talks with patient privacy advocate and expert, Dr. Adrian Gropper, about his work in providing better patient control over their health data and the role of agency, identity and existing internet tools to fulfill better patient control. Dr. Gropper's take on The Pledge for interoperability and patient access: it's a deflection to try to skirt around government action. According to Gropper, who was interviewed during the HIMSS16 conference, the patients' right of consent around their data has been seen as too risky, but the converse is now that there is zero accountability and massive amounts of data are being sold on the black market.

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AMA Adopts Principles to Promote Safe, Effective mHealth Applications

Press Release | American Medical Association (AMA) | November 16, 2016

The American Medical Association (AMA) believes mobile health applications (mHealth apps) and devices that promote safe and effective patient care have the potential to be integrated into everyday practice. During the AMA Interim Meeting, physicians voted to approve a list of principles to guide coverage and payment policies supporting the use of mHealth apps and associated devices that are accurate, effective, safe and secure...

Apixio Illuminates The Pain of Recording Patient Risk Factors (Part 2)

Andy Oram | EMR & HIPPA | October 28, 2016

The previous section of this article introduced Apixio’s analytics for payers in the Medicare Advantage program. Now we’ll step through how Apixio extracts relevant diagnostic data. Providers usually submit SOAP notes to the Apixio web site in the form of PDFs. This comes to me as a surprise, after hearing about the extravagant efforts that have gone into new CCDs and other formats such as the Blue Button project launched by the VA. Normally provided in an XML format, these documents claim to adhere to standards and offer a relatively gentle face to a computer program. In contrast, a PDF is one of the most challenging formats to parse: words and other characters are reduced to graphical symbols, while layout bears little relation to the human meaning of the data...

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Apple’s CareKit Is the Best Argument Yet for Strong Encryption

Brian Barrett | Wired | March 21, 2016

On the eve of his company’s court date with the FBI, where it will defend its right to not weaken the security of its own devices, Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage at a small theater in Cupertino to introduce a few new devices. The message of the event’s opening, though? Encryption matters. And soon, on iOS, it will matter even more. While Cook’s remarks were brief, they were determined. “We need to decide as a nation how much power the government should have over our data, and over our privacy,” Cook said before a mixed crowd of journalists and Apple employees.

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Attorney: Cloud Vendor Contracts Wrought With Pitfalls

Marla Durben Hirsch | Fierce EMR | April 7, 2014

Despite the surge by providers to cloud-based electronic health record systems, cloud vendor contracts still are wrought with pitfalls and "threats", according to attorney Steven Fox with Post & Schell, who spoke April 4, on a webinar sponsored by the American Bar Association's Health Law Section.  "All cloud providers are not created equal," he warned.

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Banner Health Cyberattack Impacts 3.7 Million People

Joseph Conn | Modern Healthcare | August 3, 2016

Banner Health is contacting 3.7 million individuals whose personal information may have been accessed in a cyberattack that began on systems that process credit card payments for food and beverage purchases at Banner locations. The breach then expanded to include patient and health plan information. The Phoenix-based health system, with locations in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada and Wyoming, first learned of the attack on July 7, according to a company statement...

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Big Chill For Telemedicine?

Lisa Gillespie | Healthcare IT News | May 5, 2014

New guidelines issued by the Federation of State Medical Boards could have a chilling effect on the growth of telemedicine – especially in rural areas and among low-income patients, say some patient advocates, health care providers and health care companies...

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Big Cyber Hack Of Health Records Is 'Only A Matter Of Time'

David Pittman | Politico Pro | July 1, 2014

The health world is flirting with disaster, say the experts who monitor crime in cyberspace. A hack that exposes the medical and financial records of tens of thousands of patients is coming, they say — it’s only a matter of when...

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Can Startups Save the NHS?

Staff Writer | Courier | November 25, 2016

A near-sacred institution, the NHS has spent little time out of the public psyche since its inception in 1948. Today, far from being a celebrated feat of public welfare, each day brings a barrage of stories of closing hospital A&Es, cuts in funding, huge debts and an ageing population. Faced by a heavy funding deficit, demands vastly different to when the service was conceived, and shifts in politics and ideology, many believe the NHS is itself strapped to a life support machine...

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Distributed Ledgers, the Next step in Patient Generated Health Data (PGHD) Including Environmental Data

Jeff Brandt | LinkedIn Pulse | December 15, 2016

Soon we will be able to access thousands of datapoint into our lives, many will reflect our environment and health. The HHS Idea Labs held a Entrepreneur-in-Residence webinar on December 13, 2016, for recruiting an software architect to assist the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in collecting employment data as it pertains to a persons health. They wish to share/store the collected data in the EHR. Onerous at best, because most EHR today do not have API for uploading data and HL7 standards do not currently provide for discreet PGHD data...

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Drugs Companies Buy NHS Patient Data, Register Reveals

James Edgar | The Telegraph | April 3, 2014

Some of world's biggest pharmaceutical companies have bought NHS patient data, a new register has revealed.  Drugs corporations including Bayer, Baxter, AstraZeneca and Roche are among dozens of private firms sold information, as well as Bupa, the healthcare provider.

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