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Data Privacy in Healthcare: A Necessity in Protecting Health Information Data

“Data Privacy” is the focus point of Healthcare businesses, as patients' confidential medical records are the most sought after data in the dark web. Any incident of data breach tarnishes hospitals’ /enterprises’ image, and hence patients' private / sensitive/ confidential / personal data needs to be handled with utmost care. Needless to state, adherence with the mandatory compliances / regulatory requirements, and local government regulations, related to “Data Privacy”, ought to be followed.

Key obligations in brief

Healthcare organizations have a paramount responsibility to protect patient data and ensure data privacy. This obligation is based on various legal and ethical principles. Here are the key obligations of healthcare organizations with respect to data privacy

Compliance with Data Protection Laws

Healthcare organizations are required to comply with relevant data protection laws and regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States or the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe. These laws establish strict guidelines for the handling of healthcare data.

Accountability

Healthcare organizations should have mechanisms in place for accountability and oversight. This includes designating a Data Protection Officer (DPO) where required and conducting regular audits to ensure compliance.

Risk Assessment and Mitigation

Regularly assess data privacy risks and implement measures to mitigate them. This includes conducting risk assessments and addressing vulnerabilities.

Breach Notification

In case of a data breach, healthcare organizations are obligated to promptly notify affected individuals, regulatory authorities, and relevant stakeholders in accordance with data protection laws.

Data Security

Healthcare organizations are obligated to implement robust data security measures to protect patient information from breaches, unauthorized access, or cyberattacks. This includes encryption, access controls, and regular security audits.

Data Minimization

Collect only the data that is necessary for the patient's care and treatment. Unnecessary data collection should be avoided to minimize risks.

Data Retention and Deletion

Maintain policies for data retention and deletion. Patient records should not be kept indefinitely, and data should be securely disposed of when it is no longer needed.

Business problem

The healthcare industry faces several key challenges when it comes to data privacy. Protecting patient data is of utmost importance due to the sensitive and confidential nature of medical information. Here are some of the key challenges healthcare organizations encounter.

Data Security

Ensuring the security of electronic health records (EHRs) and other healthcare data is a constant challenge. Cyberattacks, data breaches, and insider threats pose significant risks.
Compliance with Data Protection Laws

The healthcare industry is subject to various data protection regulations, such as HIPAA in the United States, which have strict requirements for safeguarding patient data. Ensuring compliance with these laws can be challenging.

Consent Management

Obtaining and managing patient consent for data sharing and processing is a challenge, especially when patients need to understand and grant consent for various healthcare activities.
Data Breaches

The healthcare sector is a prime target for data breaches due to the value of medical records on the black market. Responding to and mitigating the consequences of data breaches is a significant challenge.

Consent Management

Obtaining and managing patient consent for data sharing and processing is a challenge, especially when patients need to understand and grant consent for various healthcare activities.
Data Breaches

The healthcare sector is a prime target for data breaches due to the value of medical records on the black market. Responding to and mitigating the consequences of data breaches is a significant challenge.

Changing Regulations

Data protection laws and regulations evolve. Healthcare organizations must stay current with these changes and adapt their practices to remain compliant.
Data Anonymization

Even when sharing aggregated or de-identified patient data, there's a risk of re-identification. Proper anonymization techniques must be used to protect patient privacy.

Data Access Controls

Managing and enforcing proper access controls to prevent unauthorized personnel from accessing patient records and sensitive healthcare data is a complex task./p>

Solutions

Ardent Privacy’s patented technology product “TurtleShield” is an ML and AI-powered enterprise software platform, that helps businesses discover, identify, inventory, map, minimize, and securely delete personal data.

Know your sensitive data first, to secure it

This is achieved by a nimble and oil drilling-like approach to discovery: We created a global map of organizational data, which is subject to “data protection / privacy regulations” and critical to business.
Monitor Third Party data sharing

Often there are silos within entities or business and IT teams, and it is challenging to secure a holistic view of the data flow outside the organization and the data flow into the organization, especially when the data is shared with the third parties, like vendors, business partners and many more. We can create a data map, based on the data sharing, to facilitate you to take remedial actions, on the same.
Minimize data, reduce business and legal risk

This is data hygiene control and we are approaching it from a risk reduction and compliance perspective. We scan large data sets for excess data, using Machine Learning and find out excess data including personal data. This can eliminate operational inefficiencies and save cost by removing the redundant data and legal cost pertaining to regulatory compliance.

Right to Be Forgotten or Assured Deletion

Give organizations the ability to comply with obligatory erasure of personal data by allowing them to erase the data on request and validate the deletion.
Enable and automate data subject rights

Search capability in large datasets to fulfill data subject requests and enable it efficiently. The assumption that data only exists in databases and nowhere else is often not a reality, as customer data exists in many sources. Using ML & AI we crawl across data sources and find where PII exists.

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Data privacy is a significant concern in the insurance sector due to the sensitive nature of personal and financial information handled by insurance companies. Insurance providers collect and store vast amounts of data from policyholders, including personal details, medical records, financial information, and claims history. Safeguarding this data is crucial to protect customer privacy and prevent unauthorized access or data breaches.

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Data Privacy in Healthcare: A Necessity in Protecting Health Information Data