Real Worry: Medical Records Compromised
People worried about confidential electronic medical records being compromised aren't paranoid.
One of four healthcare IT professionals surveyed by the trade group Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society acknowledged their organization suffered a security breach last year.
Not surprisingly, according to the survey funded by Cisco of 300 healthcare IT professionals, identity management (45 percent of respondents) and security technologies (42 percent) represent two of the top three technologies they plan to implement for the first time in the next two years. No. 2 was RFID technology, at 43 percent.
Healthcare organizations already invest heavily in security technologies, with 98 percent of respondents saying their systems have firewalls; 83 percent, user access controls; and 81 percent, audit logs of each access to patient health records.
Nearly one-quarter of the respondents intend to designate as a priority implementation of clinical information systems for the delivery of clinical knowledge to users in the next two years. One of five survey takers see implementing or upgrading data warehousing and data mining capabilities shifting to a high priority from a low priority by 2010.
They survey also reports that employing unified communications technologies that combine voice, video, data, and mobile applications on fixed and mobile networks should occur in the next two years as healthcare providers empower users to connect with each other and healthcare systems, anywhere and at any time.
Other key findings from the survey respondents include:
• 75 percent see their budgets would increase this year. More than one-quarter say the lack of financial support was the main barrier to implementing IT.
• 75 percent have management responsibility for functions outside of IT, including telecommunications, medical informatics, health information management and biomedical engineering.
• 64 percent are members of their organization's executive team.
