Are Data Breaches


How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Mobile Devices to Keep Healthcare Records Secure


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BY DON FLUCKINGER D


ESPITE THEIR upsides, mobile health projects present a whole new set of security and privacy problems—ones that differ from those associated


with wired hospital networks. These issues include smartphones running lightweight applications (with lightweight security to go with them) and Web apps transmitting data over the public Internet (which can’t be locked down like a closed hospital network).


Yet healthcare CIOs are beholden to the same Health


Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations for wireless, Web, and mobile communications as they are with their wired networks. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health, or HITECH Act strengthened several provisions of HIPAA enforcement and significantly increased fines for data breaches of Personal Health Information (PHI).


At a recent Foundation for the National Institutes of


Health’s mHealth Summit, three speakers discussed the issue of mobile health security and privacy: Col. Ronald Poropatich, MD, Deputy Director of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command; Herbert Lin, Chief Scientist at the National Research Council’s Computer Science and Telecommunications Board; and Adam Greene, Senior Health IT and Privacy Specialist at the Office for Civil Rights—the agency overseeing HIPAA enforcement.


“Healthcare providers tuning up their HIPAA compliance programs should focus on the biggest known vulnerabilities first,” Greene advised. He broke down the first year of healthcare data-breach statistics since the HITECH Act’s updates to HIPAA went into effect in September 2009. The biggest culprits are notebooks (24%), paper records (22%), desktop computers (16%), and


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