RECORDS,DOCUMENTS & DATA
Security conscious S
IT security has always been a key concern for NHS trusts, and the gradual shift to paperless working is making it an even higher priority. At an acute teaching trust like the Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen, the large number of staff passing through means the best processes and technologies need to be in place. NHE spoke to the trust’s director of information management & technology, James Norman.
ome of the biggest risks to patient data protection and IT security in the NHS
come not from malicious hackers or cyber- criminals, but the “well-meaning insider” – the clinician going the extra mile to work on a patient’s case who unwittingly breaches security policies by emailing a file to their personal email address, for example. As soon as the data is transferred in such a non-secure way, there are potentially very damaging consequences.
According to James Norman, IMT director at the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust,
it’s
“usually because they’re dedicated to the job and don’t realise they’re transferring the data via a non-secure route”.
He added: “You rarely get a malicious incident, it’s very rare. I’m aware of ones at other trusts which I don’t think were malicious, but were for personal intent – well-publicised cases where consultants
Restrictions
The trust’s connections with universities in Liverpool mean many of its consultants are also researchers, whose offices contain two computers: one on the trust’s network, and one hooked into their university’s systems. Norman explained: “They’re completely separate machines, but to try to make
have been dismissed on the back of it, for taking patients’ records for their own personal, private use. Thankfully we haven’t seen anything of that sort here.
“Those are the potential things you’re faced with though: the misuse of data for research purposes, or private use, where patients’ records might be sold onto drug companies for example. The data we hold is incredibly valuable for research purposes, and we need to ensure it doesn’t get abused by any members of staff, and that patients’ data and privacy is held paramount.”
their jobs easier, what those consultants have tended to do in the past is just email from one to the other, rather than securely transfer the data. That’s
start to open up. It’s nothing to do with malicious intent; it’s purely trying to bring in additional research to help understand their diagnosis or case, and it’s to better the care for their patient, but they don’t realise they’ve breached trust policy by doing it like that.”
But thanks to new technologies and processes being implemented at the trust, some of those restrictions can be lifted – while still ensuring the security of data transfer. Norman
said: “The policies
we’re putting in are to actually free up and release some of those restrictions so people are able to email it to themselves, or transfer data, but in an encrypted manner. This is all about providing secure means for the data flows, rather than saying they’ve got to jump through 20 hoops, which will
where risks
© Pete 40 | national health executive Mar/Apr 12
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