The cure to improve and protect health care records.

• Author: Bagwell, Scott
• Position: Medicine & Health

MEDICAL identification theft has increased by 21.7% since 2013 and, over the past two years, 65% of health care organizations have experienced a cyber attack, according to a Ponemon Institute study sponsored by the Medical Identity Fraud Alliance. These numbers are disconcerting, and reflect a dangerous new pattern in cyber crime, as identity thieves expand their targets from the financial sector into health care. What is more unsettling is the vulnerability of this data to things as simple as human fallibility. Indeed, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, 94% of health care data breaches are the result of simple human transgressions.

In the health field, information security vulnerabilities are even more concerning because these security slips, hacks, and instances of compromised data overshadow the enormous potential for the good that Big Data holds for health care. Digitizing health records promises to bring the computing power of Big Data to bear on tough health care problems. A digital system streamlines patient data, improves the quality and ease of care, and reduces costs at a time when health care expenditures are soaring.

From the moment a prospective patient arrives for treatment or accesses his or her patient portal remotely, it is data that accurately can determine what insurance or financial assistance benefits may be available. It is identity-matching tools that can confirm whether that person is, in fact, the individual he or she claims to be. Further, it is data that can assess the risk of a patient's remote interaction by analyzing device and usage characteristics. These interactions are logged, analyzed, and correlated across the millions of other websites being accessed in the banking, financial services, and other industries. By looking for patterns in this enormous dataset, anomalies and outliers can be detected that may indicate someone inappropriately trying to gain access into these systems.

However, the rapid shift to digital and the legislative and policy changes put in place to encourage electronic health records have caused issues of their own. The Hi-Tech Act, which offered financial incentives to invest in technology, along with the process changes brought by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, have coincided with dramatic technology advances.

While these portals are improving patient engagement and offering greater efficiency, security requirements often are at odds with the...