The healthcare space has advanced by leaps and bounds in this era of digitalization. Worldwide spending on healthcare services is increasing rapidly and the future of this industry looks bright for sure.
It goes without saying that care providers are investing in state-of-the-art technologies to furnish high-quality services for their patients in order to keep up with the soaring competition. Healthcare apps have been one such tech solution that is taking healthcare by storm at present.
However, just like in the case of every other innovation, it doesn’t come without its share of concerns. Data privacy happens to be one of the biggest concerns here.
The healthcare industry is one of the prime targets for data breaches, cyber-attacks, and hacking. They can put the sensitive patient health data at risk, especially when using a mobile app.
In order to avoid theft, fraud, and misuse of the patient data, all healthcare apps in the US have to be compliant to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). It is important to remember that HIPAA compliance isn’t just a part of everyday life, but a requirement for remaining in good legal and ethical standing.
Below, we look at a few ways healthcare providers can make sure their app remains HIPAA compliant at all times and avoid penalties in the long run.
1) Partnering with App Development Experts that Understand HIPAA
First and foremost, in order for healthcare providers to ensure that their app remains HIPAA compliant, they’re going to be needing an app that is carefully designed keeping in mind HIPAA regulations, right from its development stages.
HIPAA compliance adds numerous layers of complexity to app development, such as defining and implementing Technical Safeguards, Physical Safeguards, Administrative Safeguards, Documentation Safeguards, and Breach Notification Rules; to name a few.
The nuances of HIPAA can get problematic for app development companies that operate outside the healthcare space. Therefore, healthcare providers need to make sure to consult a developer that has past experience or proven expertise in the healthcare niche.
Also, it is important to note that any service providers you partner with for your app should observe HIPAA rules and follow compliance ethics too. For instance, if you plan on integrating your app with a cloud platform to store data remotely, you need to make sure that the cloud service provider observes optimal compliance to HIPAA.
Storing patient data in a compliant manner requires careful consideration of the limitations of the law and the ways in which the provider can reap maximum benefits while adhering to compliance rules. Therefore, it is best that you partner with app development experts that understand HIPAA and the related non-adherence implications.
2) Formulating Written Guidelines and Standards of Conduct
When COVID-19 hit us, a lot of healthcare operations came to a halt and many providers found their existing models inefficient in terms of protecting patient data privacy since the majority of workflows moved online- something we’d never experienced before. Employing robust safeguards in order to protect patient information has become crucial now more than ever.
In order for a healthcare organization to be able to guarantee that its app is safe for use and fulfilling all regulations laid out in the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules, it must have a HIPAA compliance plan in place.
HIPAA compliance plans are important for many reasons, but the most important reason is that they ensure all medical records and information considered PHI (Protected Health Information) under HIPAA rules is efficiently protected against possible breaches.
Organizations should include guidelines for physical, technical, and administrative safeguards in their compliance plan to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of PHI and ePHI.
If a violation or breach of patient information ever were to occur, HIPAA compliance plans help manage the breach and mitigate its after-effects so that minimum damage is caused. They also reduce potential vulnerabilities and associated risks in the future, and can save the provider money by helping the organization enact necessary measures.
One important thing to remember here is that reviewing and updating policies and procedures within the compliance plan at frequent intervals in accordance with changing rules is equally important to prevent the document from getting outdated.
3) Conducting Effective Staff Training
There’s more to staying HIPAA compliant when it comes to healthcare apps than the eyes can see. All your additional measures will only work if the very first points of contact within your organization, i.e. your people, are well trained.
It’s of critical importance for healthcare providers to educate staff on how to maintain compliance at all times. It really doesn’t matter how big or small your practice is, every single employee should know the basics of compliance and the particular details related to their role.
Now, in order for that to happen, your staff requires some form of formal HIPAA compliance training. What’s important to note here is that furnishing such training is not a matter of choice for providers; it is rather a legal obligation that must be fulfilled and formally documented.
You can start by establishing what type of information needs to be protected and then segregate it on the basis of priority.
Authorized individuals on your staff who have access to sensitive patient information need to understand that it is their liability to protect that data. If not, these individuals put the entire organization at risk for grave penalties and/ or other legal obligations that will tarnish its reputation—or even threaten its survival—in the long run.
4) Conducting Internal Access Monitoring and Auditing Frequently
More often than not, auditing and monitoring of access to PHI is prompted either due to patient complaints or some other event setting off the need to conduct an investigation. An approach of this sort is rather reactive or for-cause access monitoring and auditing. Now, that definitely is important but providers should also be doing proactive, not-for-cause monitoring and auditing.
The HIPAA Security Rule clearly states that covered entities and their business associates have an obligation to have procedures and policies in place to detect, contain, prevent, and correct any security violations committed within the organization, whether knowingly or unknowingly.
The Rule also requires covered entities and their business associates to “implement procedures to regularly review records of information security system activity, such as audit logs, access reports and security incident tracking reports.”
Additionally, it also states that the covered entity implements software, hardware, and/or procedural processes that both examine and record activity in information systems containing electronic protected health information (ePHI).
Due to all these reasons and many others, it is important for healthcare providers to conduct internal access monitoring and auditing on a frequent basis. They can also hire an external agency to do so and provide them with detailed audit reports.
All in all, HIPAA compliance is a multi-faceted and crucial aspect of healthcare app development. Providers need to make sure that all the sensitive data they’re storing with their app- whether at rest, or in transit- is HIPAA compliant.
In the end, it is important for providers to remember that HIPAA rules were designed for their own benefit and following them shouldn’t be a one-time thing, but more a way of practice. You can only be a good care provider if you keep people first, and HIPAA will help you do just that.
About the author
Rahul Varshneya is the co-founder and president of Arkenea, a digital health consulting firm. Rahul has been featured as a technology thought leader across Bloomberg TV, Forbes, HuffPost, Inc, among others.