“One of the biggest challenges, if not the biggest challenge, of EMRs and EHRs is ensuring that the data is secure and patient privacy honored. There will always be a camp that thinks EMRs and EHRs can never be secured and we ought not use them. That’s not the reality today, so we as an industry and a society need to keep the discussion going on how we can trust electronic patient data.
So long as technology has IT experts to continually work on security issues, technology is not something the rest of us need to focus on. Policy issues are something else altogether. Lack of policy, in fact, was the driver for many of the data breaches that have been reported. There was no policy in place barring electronic equipment bearing personal health information from leaving the facilities in some instances.”
Article
Patty Enrado, EHRWatch, 14 December 2009
