Page 20 - Bexar County Medical Society Purchasing Directory

MEDICAL
TECHNOLOGY

Why patients worry about

cybersecurity

and patient-generated data

By Andis Robeznieks

Patient-generated health data (PGHd), from wearables and other challenges and security concerns that PGHd add to the digital
remote devices, represents an exciting opportunity to more deeply health picture.
engage patients and families in care and offer robust data streams Security and privacy protections applied to PGHd are “uneven
of objective information to better guide treatment plans. Yet, federal and do not establish a consistent legal and regulatory framework,”
health IT experts note, one big factor that stands in the way of ad- according to the ONC report, “Conceptualizing a data Infrastruc-
vancement on this front are fears about the cybersecurity of this ture for the Capture, Use, and Sharing of Patient-Generated Health
sensitive information. data in Care delivery and Research through 2024.”
The AMA is committed to making technology an asset in the de- like all data, PGHd “may be at risk for security breaches that
livery of health care, not a burden. Efforts in this area include cre- could affect the integrity of the data and expose the data to access
ation of the digital Health Implementation Playbook to speed the for malicious purposes because they are not subject to the same se-
adoption and scaling of innovative solutions. curity regulatory framework as HIPAA-regulated entities. Concerns
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) include insecure points of data collection and insecure data move-
has released a white paper that outlined some of the opportunities, ment that potentially expose the device or the clinician’s information

20 San Antonio Medicine • April 2019