Security
With more than 350 exhibitors on the show floor, including many for the first time, MGMA's exhibit hall is expected to be abuzz with activity and fresh ideas. There's also a "Tweet Street."
The healthcare industry is swimming in Social Security numbers, thanks to the necessities of patient record management technology. But balancing those requirements with fraud mitigation and privacy protections is proving a big challenge.
Wes Wright, chief information officer of Seattle Children's Hospital, had a couple big reasons for embracing a virtual desktop infrastructure strategy for the 323-bed tertiary care facility. "Speed and ubiquity," he says. But soon he found a bonus.
For wearable technology to live up to the hype, especially when it comes to healthcare, it will have to be "interoperable, integrated, engaging, social and outcomes-driven," according to PwC.
National coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD, revealed on Tuesday that ONC now has a new Chief Privacy Officer. "She brings a set of rich experiences at the intersection of health information, privacy, and modernizing the health care delivery system," DeSalvo wrote in an email to staff.
An academic medical center in California is notifying patients of a HIPAA breach after officials discovered that a physician's email account had been hacked by an outside source.
Add Facebook to the list of Silicon Valley technology companies looking for ways to make personal health data a new part of their growth strategy. Like Apple and Google, the social network is said to be developing wellness apps, as well as health discussion groups for its 1.3 billion users.
If you think you'll be able to dodge a data breach without putting in some serious work, think again. This year, healthcare organizations have reported more breaches than ever -- a 10 percent jump, on average. So what are they doing to improve these numbers? Not nearly enough, says the Ponemon Institute.
The Health Information Trust Alliance has put out a word of warning about Shellshock, a system vulnerability it says could wreak much more damage than the infamous Heartbleed bug.
"Just by having an app on your device, (a cybercriminal) can determine your call history, take your contact list info, if they choose to." That's how vulnerable smartphones, tablets and their mobile ilk actually are, Jim Routh said, and it's not just the devices that chief information security officers like him have to worry about.