By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
  • Health
    • Mental Health
    Health
    Healthcare organizations are operating on slimmer profit margins than ever. One report in August showed that they are even lower than the beginning of the…
    Show More
    Top News
    How Not to Become a Victim of Medical Scams
    How Not to Become a Victim of Medical Scams
    December 22, 2021
    11 Ways You Can Care for Your Elder Family Members Health
    11 Ways You Can Care for Your Elder Family Members Health
    April 6, 2022
    How Can Brain Injury Lead To Dangerous Long-Term Effects?
    How Can Brain Injury Lead To Dangerous Long-Term Effects?
    August 30, 2022
    Latest News
    Choosing the Right Supplement Manufacturer for Your Brand
    May 1, 2025
    Engineering Temporary Hospitals for Extreme Weather
    April 24, 2025
    How a Level 3 RQF Helps in Health and Social Care
    April 9, 2025
    Breathing Easy: The Impact of Air Conditioning on Indoor Air Quality and Health
    April 6, 2025
  • Policy and Law
    • Global Healthcare
    • Medical Ethics
    Policy and Law
    Get the latest updates about Insurance policies and Laws in the Healthcare industry for different geographical locations.
    Show More
    Top News
    medicaid drug costs
    Is Managed Care the Answer to Reduce Medicaid Drug Costs?
    August 14, 2013
    Mobile Health Around the Globe: Good work in Africa; Cell Phones Improve Health Education in Family Planning.
    August 20, 2012
    medical device standards
    FDA Updates List of Recognized Standards, Confusion Ensues
    September 5, 2013
    Latest News
    The Critical Role of Healthcare in Personal Injury Recovery: A Comprehensive Guide for Victims
    May 13, 2025
    The Backbone of Successful Trials: Clinical Data Management
    April 28, 2025
    Advancing Your Healthcare Career through Education and Specialization
    April 16, 2025
    Do Abuse Reporting Systems in Assisted Living Protect Residents’ Health?
    April 15, 2025
  • Medical Innovations
  • News
  • Wellness
  • Tech
Search
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: Digital Patient Privacy Loss in EHRs and Other Health IT Systems
Share
Notification Show More
Font ResizerAa
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
Follow US
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Health Works Collective > eHealth > Medical Records > Digital Patient Privacy Loss in EHRs and Other Health IT Systems
eHealthMedical RecordsTechnology

Digital Patient Privacy Loss in EHRs and Other Health IT Systems

ShahidShah
Last updated: January 31, 2014 9:00 am
ShahidShah
Share
7 Min Read
SHARE

ehr and patient privacyLast Friday I was invited by the Patient Privacy Rights (PPR) Foundation to lead a discussion about privacy and EHRs. The discussion, entitled “Fact vs. Fiction: Best Privacy Practices for EHRs in the Cloud,” addressed patient privacy concerns and potential solutions for doctors working with EHRs.

ehr and patient privacyLast Friday I was invited by the Patient Privacy Rights (PPR) Foundation to lead a discussion about privacy and EHRs. The discussion, entitled “Fact vs. Fiction: Best Privacy Practices for EHRs in the Cloud,” addressed patient privacy concerns and potential solutions for doctors working with EHRs.

While we are all somewhat disturbed by the slow erosion of privacy in all aspects of our digital lives, the rather rapid loss of patient privacy around health data is especially unnerving because healthcare is so near and dear to us all. In order to make sure we provided some actionable intelligence during the PPR discussion, I started the talk off giving some of the reasons why we’re losing patient privacy in the hopes that it might foster innovators to think about ways of slowing down inevitable losses.

Here are some of the causes I mentioned on Friday, not in any particular order:

More Read

Bloggers and Social Media Risk
How Technology Is Enhancing Healthcare Services
Will Virtual Clinical Trials Revolutionize the Pharma Industry?
Every Hospital Needs An Animal Therapy Program To Cultivate Wellness
Is Lack of Telemedicine Reimbursement a Fair Excuse for NOT Getting Started With Telemedicine?
  • Most patients, even technically astute ones, don’t really understand the concept of digital privacy. Digital is a “cyber world” and not easy to picture so patients believe their data and privacy is protected when it may not be. I usually explain patient privacy in the digital world to non-techies using the analogy of curtains, doors, and windows. The digital health IT world of today is like walking into a patient’s room in a hospital in which it’s a large shared space with no curtains, no walls, no doors, etc. (even for bathrooms or showers!). In this imaginary world, every private conversation occurs so that others can hear it, all procedures are performed in front of others, etc. without the patient’s consent and their objections don’t even matter. If they can imagine that scenario, then patients will probably have a good idea about how digital privacy is conducted today — a big shared room where everyone sees and hears everything even over patients’ objections.
  • It’s faster and easier to create non-privacy-aware IT solutions than privacy-aware ones.  Having built dozens of HIPAA-compliant and highly secure enterprise health IT systems for decades, my anecdotal experience is that when it comes to features and functions vs. privacy, features win. Product designers, architects, and engineers talk the talk but given the difficulties of creating viable systems in a coordinated, integrated digital ecosystem it’s really hard to walk the privacy walk  Because digital privacy is so hard to describe even in simple single enterprise systems, the difficulty of describing and defining it across multiple integrated systems is often the reason for poor privacy features in modern systems.
  • It’s less expensive to create non-privacy-aware IT solutions. Because designing privacy into the software from the beginning is hard and requires expensive security resources to do so, we often see developers wait until the end of the process to consider privacy. Privacy can no more be added on top of an existing system than security can — either it’s built into the functionality or it’s just going to be missing. Because it’s cheaper to leave it out, it’s often left out.
  • The government is incentivizing and certifying functionality over privacy and security. All the meaningful use certification and testing steps are focused too much on prescribed functionality and not enough on data-centric privacy capabilities such as notifications, disclosure tracking, and compartmentalization. If privacy was important in EHRs then the NIST test plans would cover that. Privacy is difficult to define and even more difficult to implement so the testing process doesn’t focus on it at this time.
  • Business models that favor privacy loss tend to be more profitable. Data aggregation and homogenization, resale, secondary use, and related business models tend to be quite profitable. The only way they will remain profitable is to have easy and unfettered (low friction) ways of sharing and aggregating data. Because enhanced privacy through opt-in processes, disclosures, and notifications would end up reducing data sharing and potentially reducing revenues and profit, we see that privacy loss is going to happen with inevitable rise of EHRs.
  • Patients don’t really demand privacy from their providers or IT solutions in the same way they demand other things. We like to think that all patients demand digital privacy for their data. However, it’s rare for patients to choose physicians, health systems, or other care providers based on their privacy views. Even when privacy violations are found and punished, it’s uncommon for patients to switch to other providers.
  • Regulations like HIPAA have made is easy for privacy loss to occur. HIPAA has probably done more to harm privacy over the past decade than any other government regulations. More on this in a later post.

The only way to improve privacy across the digital spectrum is to realize that health providers need to conduct business in a tricky intermediary-driven health system with sometimes conflicting business goals like reduction of medical errors or lower cost (which can only come with more data sharing, not less). Digital patient privacy is important but there are many valid reasons why privacy is either hard or impossible to achieve in today’s environment. Unless we intelligently and honestly understand why we lose patient privacy we can’t really create novel and unique solutions to help curb the loss.

What do you think? What other causes of digital patient privacy loss would you add to my list above?

(EHR and patient privacy / shutterstock)

TAGGED:EHRHealth ITpatient privacy
Share This Article
Facebook Copy Link Print
Share

Stay Connected

1.5kFollowersLike
4.5kFollowersFollow
2.8kFollowersPin
136kSubscribersSubscribe

Latest News

Dr. Klaus Rentrop Shares Acute Myocardial Infarction heart treatment
Dr. Klaus Rentrop Shares Acute Myocardial Infarction
Cardiology
May 13, 2025
The Critical Role of Healthcare in Personal Injury Recovery: A Comprehensive Guide for Victims
The Critical Role of Healthcare in Personal Injury Recovery: A Comprehensive Guide for Victims
Health care
May 13, 2025
fitness
What Personal Trainers Can & Can’t Say When it Comes to Nutrition
Fitness Wellness
May 12, 2025
online nursing degree
Online FNP Programs Help Advance Your Nursing Career
Career Nursing
May 12, 2025

You Might also Like

Medical Device Concept Development Paving the Way for Healthcare Innovations
Medical Devices

Medical Device Concept Development: Paving the Way for Healthcare Innovations

December 2, 2023
healthy clinic
Medical Innovations

5 Tips To Create A Safe And Healthy Clinic

March 1, 2022
embarrassed desperate woman
eHealthMedical InnovationsMobile Health

Dying of Embarrassment

May 5, 2015

Video: Demo of Carestream’s New Fluoroscopy System

September 17, 2015
Subscribe
Subscribe to our newsletter to get our newest articles instantly!
Follow US
© 2008-2025 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?