Over the past year, consumer complaints to the Office of Civil Rights regarding HIPAA violations has skyrocketed. The number of complaints rose nearly 10x between 2013 and 2003. While 2013 was a record year for complaints, 2014 is setting up to easily shatter the previous mark. Complaint volume is up 45.7% year-over-year through the month of May (the most recent month with data available).

Enforcement of the new Omnibus Final Rule that was published in January of 2013 and effective as of September requiring all Business Associates to be HIPAA compliant will likely exacerbate these numbers further as audits being in earnest this year.

We’ve compiled a collection of data around HIPAA complaints over the past decade to give you a better picture of the regulatory landscape and enforcement actions across the country, along with the types of complaints, breaches and fines that most often occur when it comes to HIPAA compliance issues.

What does this all mean? If you’re a developer building an eHealth or mHealth application that will collect, manage, or store protected health information you’ll want to first determine whether your application will fall under HIPAA. If it does, you’ll need to ensure that you’re HIPAA compliant and that you’ve implemented the best practice safeguards to keep user data safe.

For more information, checkout our Developers Guide to HIPAA Compliance on GitHub.