What is mean by medical privacy in healthcare technology?

Medical privacy or health privacy is the practice of maintaining the security and confidentiality of patient records. It involves both the conversational discretion of health care providers and the security of medical records. The terms can also refer to the physical privacy of patients from other patients and providers while in a medical facility. Modern concerns include the degree of disclosure to insurance companies, employers, and other third parties. The advent of electronic medical records (EMR) and patient care management systems (PCMS) have raised new concerns about privacy, balanced with efforts to reduce duplication of services and medical errors.

Many countries including Australia, Canada, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, and the Netherlands have enacted laws that try to protect people's privacy. However, many of these laws have proven to be less effective in practice than in theory. The United States passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in 1996 in an attempt to increase privacy precautions within medical institutions. The three goals of information security, including electronic information security, are confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Organizations are attempting to meet these goals, referred to as the C.I.A. Triad, which is the "practice of defending information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, inspection, recording or destruction."

In a 2004 editorial in the Washington Post, U.S. Senators Bill Frist and Hillary Clinton supported this observation, stating [patients] need information, including access to their own health records. At the same time, we must ensure the privacy of the systems, or they will undermine the trust they are designed to create". A 2005 report by the California Health Care Foundation found that "67 percent of national respondents felt 'somewhat' or 'very concerned' about the privacy of their personal medical records".

The importance of privacy in electronic health records became prominent with the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in 2009. One of the provisions (known as the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health [HITECH] Act) of the ARRA mandated incentives to clinicians for the implementation of electronic health records by 2015. Privacy advocates in the United States have raised concerns about unauthorized access to personal data as more medical practices switch from paper to electronic medical records. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) explained that some of the safety measures that EHR systems can utilize are passwords and pin numbers that control access to such systems, encryption of information, and an audit trail to keep track of the changes made to records.

Providing patient access to EHRs is strictly mandated by HIPAA's Privacy Rule. One study found that each year there are an estimated 25 million compelled authorizations for the release of personal health records. Researchers, however, have found new security threats open up as a result. Some of these security and privacy threats include hackers, viruses, and worms. These privacy threats are made more prominent by the emergence of "cloud computing", which is the use of shared computer processing power. Health care organizations are increasingly using cloud computing as a way to handle large amounts of data. This type of data storage, however, is susceptible to natural disasters, cybercrime and technological terrorism, and hardware failure. Health information breaches accounted for 39 percent of all breaches in 2015. IT Security costs and implementations are needed to protect health institutions against security and data breaches.

Although privacy issues with the health screening is a great concern among individuals and organizations, there has been little focus on the amount of work being done within the law to maintain the privacy expectation that people desire. Many of these issues lie within the abstractness of the term “privacy” as there are many different interpretations of the term, especially in the context of the law. Prior to 1994, there had been no cases regarding screening practices and the implications towards an individual's medical privacy, unless it was regarding HIV and drug testing. Within Glover v Eastern Nebraska Community Office of Retardation, an employee sued her employer against violating her 4th amendment rights because of unnecessary HIV testing. The court ruled in favor of the employer and argued that it was an unreasonable search to have it tested. However, this was only one of the few precedents that people have to use. With more precedents, the relationships between employees and employers will be better defined. Yet with more requirements, testing among patients will lead to additional standards for meeting health care standards. Screening has become a large indicator of diagnostic tools, yet there are concerns with the information that can be gained and subsequently shared with other people other than the patient and healthcare provider.

Healthcare information security is a major concern for healthcare providers as well as governments across the world. With patient health records being digitized, there is the danger of health information becoming compromised or stolen outright. Cybersecurity is a top priority for health systems managers everywhere. But there are problems that go beyond the typical cyber threats that can cause serious security breaches. These serious threats include the following. With so many health and wellness programs and procedures becoming available on mobile devices, hospitals and clinical practices must be aware of the threat of security breaches and hacking of health data. Doctors, nurses, and hospital staff are using tablets and mobile devices, and so are patients and visitors. This means a potential for security breaches on both sides of patient care. Network access control (NAC) solutions can be a smart move in order to keep health data as secure as possible. NAC identifies each type of user and device and then has the ability to scan for threats or out-of-date spyware protection. NAC solutions can also keep other devices and equipment secure where so many devices are inter-connected.