Anton Zheliabin, Product manager, ComeBack Mobility08.25.21
The mobile health industry is experiencing a real boom in the U.S. and Europe these days. Thousands of services are uploaded to app stores worldwide each year to help people take care of their health, with Statisa showing nearly 54,000 medical iOS apps, while a similar number exists on Android.
Over the last decade, investor funding in the digital health industry has increased significantly. In 2019, the global telemedicine market was valued at over $50 billion. The market was forecasted to grow significantly, and is projected to be valued at nearly US $460 billion by 2030.
A huge number of entrepreneurs are engaged in the healthcare sector, all fighting for their slice of the market’s pie and the attention of users and medical professionals. It’s becoming an oversaturated market, and still, a few problems are yet unsolved. One of the most vital problems remains the security of patient data.
Higher Standards of Security are a Must in Healthcare
Technological progress has helped to not only extend human lives, but to also help us all take preventive measures in advance. Healthcare data security is a regulated area in the U.S. and Europe with strict requirements regarding what person or entity is covered, what kind of information is protected, and what must be done to ensure appropriate protection of healthcare patient information in the future.
What puts the healthcare sector at a higher risk of data attacks compared to other industries? The answer is simple: the type of data that is collected and stored. Global healthcare organizations collect highly sensitive data, such as detailed records of patients with their names, D.O.B’s, addresses, social security numbers, payment information, and more.
Knowing this, it is little wonder that the risk of data attacks has increased greatly since such information can be extremely valuable on the black market. Data security is an essential part of the healthcare industry for protecting confidential patient information and complying with regulations such as HIPAA. Back in the day, data was fairly easy to protect and keep secure, as the data was recorded on paper and locked in physical cabinets.
In the modern world, with its rapidly advancing digital technologies, patient records are now recorded on computers, servers, and storage devices. Unfortunately, new kinds of records lead to new kinds of risks such as data breaches, malware and virus threats, ransomware and more.
Today, doctors and healthcare personnel rely on computers and smartphones to access, update, and record patient data. In addition, such data may also be shared between multiple facilities, healthcare providers and government health departments.
The Rising Importance of Advanced Security in Telemedicine
Data security stands for any type of preventative measure that helps secure and protect data. It is vital that healthcare organizations carefully determine the potential causes of data breaches and develop effective security solutions that include both internal and external risk factors.
Why is HIPAA compliance necessary in medical software development? HIPAA helps keep health information private. It covers entities including U.S. health projects, health care providers, and health information exchange centers, with business associates defined as any organization or individual acting as a provider or subcontractor with access to PHI, or Protected Health Information. Examples include data processing companies, data service providers, and data storage firms. There are two components of HIPAA: privacy and security. These two rules work together to define what HHS (Health and Human Services) requires as procedures and policies for handling PHI in paper, electronic and other forms.
Smartphones are widely used in mobile health and telemedicine solutions. They perform tasks such as exchanging data between doctors and patients, checking vital patient functions, gathering data, analytics and more. A HIPAA-compliant healthcare solution requires organizations and stakeholders to help patients with their care. Compliance with these rules is extremely important for a startup or SaaS development company to be able to run its solutions while dealing with sensitive clinical information.
There are huge fines and criminal penalties for circumventing this law. HIPAA-compliant application development rules are constantly changing and evolving to be easier to understand. By integrating this compliance standard into the specific application, you can easily protect patient data more efficiently.
For example, the telehealth company ComeBack Mobility, which developed Smart Crutch Tips, records and measures the patient’s every step, ensures the secure collection, storage, and transmission of encrypted data between patient and physician, smart tip and app. The company monitors access control audits and ensures that patients and physicians log in to the app securely. To do this, every telemedicine company has to choose to work with an efficient hosting provider who can offer backup and recovery services for their telemedicine solution. Disposing of outdated or expired medical app data is extremely important. Any unused medical data should be permanently deleted without the possibility of recovery, and much more for safe telemedicine operations.
The Apple Watch and other smartwatches monitor your fitness levels, blood oxygenation, heart health and check for signs of atrial fibrillation, and synchronize the data with the respective health apps on their devices, while AliveCor remains relevant by promising the most accurate detection of arrhythmias than any other personal EKG.
More great examples of medical apps can be seen in SensorTower’s list of the 200 top grossing medical apps on iOS, in just about every medical category possible.
The time has come to realize the truly incredible opportunities offered by today’s technologies. Telemedicine’s advanced opportunities include ease of subspecialist access, easier postoperative evaluations, decreased travel burden for out-of-town patients, marketing, and an increased proportion of actual in-office patient visits being surgical in nature. While the problem of security has become more severe in the healthcare sector, the latest developments following HIPAA compliance can be the much-needed reassurance that digitization doesn’t always come along with threats.
Anton Zheliabin is a product manager for ComeBack Mobility.
Over the last decade, investor funding in the digital health industry has increased significantly. In 2019, the global telemedicine market was valued at over $50 billion. The market was forecasted to grow significantly, and is projected to be valued at nearly US $460 billion by 2030.
A huge number of entrepreneurs are engaged in the healthcare sector, all fighting for their slice of the market’s pie and the attention of users and medical professionals. It’s becoming an oversaturated market, and still, a few problems are yet unsolved. One of the most vital problems remains the security of patient data.
Higher Standards of Security are a Must in Healthcare
Technological progress has helped to not only extend human lives, but to also help us all take preventive measures in advance. Healthcare data security is a regulated area in the U.S. and Europe with strict requirements regarding what person or entity is covered, what kind of information is protected, and what must be done to ensure appropriate protection of healthcare patient information in the future.
What puts the healthcare sector at a higher risk of data attacks compared to other industries? The answer is simple: the type of data that is collected and stored. Global healthcare organizations collect highly sensitive data, such as detailed records of patients with their names, D.O.B’s, addresses, social security numbers, payment information, and more.
Knowing this, it is little wonder that the risk of data attacks has increased greatly since such information can be extremely valuable on the black market. Data security is an essential part of the healthcare industry for protecting confidential patient information and complying with regulations such as HIPAA. Back in the day, data was fairly easy to protect and keep secure, as the data was recorded on paper and locked in physical cabinets.
In the modern world, with its rapidly advancing digital technologies, patient records are now recorded on computers, servers, and storage devices. Unfortunately, new kinds of records lead to new kinds of risks such as data breaches, malware and virus threats, ransomware and more.
Today, doctors and healthcare personnel rely on computers and smartphones to access, update, and record patient data. In addition, such data may also be shared between multiple facilities, healthcare providers and government health departments.
The Rising Importance of Advanced Security in Telemedicine
Data security stands for any type of preventative measure that helps secure and protect data. It is vital that healthcare organizations carefully determine the potential causes of data breaches and develop effective security solutions that include both internal and external risk factors.
Why is HIPAA compliance necessary in medical software development? HIPAA helps keep health information private. It covers entities including U.S. health projects, health care providers, and health information exchange centers, with business associates defined as any organization or individual acting as a provider or subcontractor with access to PHI, or Protected Health Information. Examples include data processing companies, data service providers, and data storage firms. There are two components of HIPAA: privacy and security. These two rules work together to define what HHS (Health and Human Services) requires as procedures and policies for handling PHI in paper, electronic and other forms.
Smartphones are widely used in mobile health and telemedicine solutions. They perform tasks such as exchanging data between doctors and patients, checking vital patient functions, gathering data, analytics and more. A HIPAA-compliant healthcare solution requires organizations and stakeholders to help patients with their care. Compliance with these rules is extremely important for a startup or SaaS development company to be able to run its solutions while dealing with sensitive clinical information.
There are huge fines and criminal penalties for circumventing this law. HIPAA-compliant application development rules are constantly changing and evolving to be easier to understand. By integrating this compliance standard into the specific application, you can easily protect patient data more efficiently.
For example, the telehealth company ComeBack Mobility, which developed Smart Crutch Tips, records and measures the patient’s every step, ensures the secure collection, storage, and transmission of encrypted data between patient and physician, smart tip and app. The company monitors access control audits and ensures that patients and physicians log in to the app securely. To do this, every telemedicine company has to choose to work with an efficient hosting provider who can offer backup and recovery services for their telemedicine solution. Disposing of outdated or expired medical app data is extremely important. Any unused medical data should be permanently deleted without the possibility of recovery, and much more for safe telemedicine operations.
The Apple Watch and other smartwatches monitor your fitness levels, blood oxygenation, heart health and check for signs of atrial fibrillation, and synchronize the data with the respective health apps on their devices, while AliveCor remains relevant by promising the most accurate detection of arrhythmias than any other personal EKG.
More great examples of medical apps can be seen in SensorTower’s list of the 200 top grossing medical apps on iOS, in just about every medical category possible.
The time has come to realize the truly incredible opportunities offered by today’s technologies. Telemedicine’s advanced opportunities include ease of subspecialist access, easier postoperative evaluations, decreased travel burden for out-of-town patients, marketing, and an increased proportion of actual in-office patient visits being surgical in nature. While the problem of security has become more severe in the healthcare sector, the latest developments following HIPAA compliance can be the much-needed reassurance that digitization doesn’t always come along with threats.
Anton Zheliabin is a product manager for ComeBack Mobility.
