Interoperability is the highest-trending topic in healthcare IT today

Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, or FHIR, is a long-awaited interoperability rule that will enable seamless, on-demand information exchange of clinical records among providers and data systems and will result in coordinated, cost-efficient care.

With the COVID-19 outbreak, healthcare data interoperability has become an increasingly pressing concern for healthcare organizations. Healthcare experts have long proposed that easy sharing of clinical records among providers and data systems would result in coordinated, cost-efficient care. Patient rights advocates have also encouraged secure data sharing to improve patients’ and their providers’ access to critical patient information. As a result, there’s a great deal of attention towards the data standards that will enable seamless, on-demand information exchange, such as FHIR, or Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource.  

FHIR is one of the most popular protocols for connecting disparate data systems and sharing data in a secure manner. Since the interoperability rule released by the Office of National Coordinator of Health IT (ONC) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) states the adoption of FHIR Release 4 for API-based data exchange, it’s important to get answers to certain important questions. 

Why Was FHIR Created?

FHIR is better than current standards because:

• Faster, easier implementation and interoperability
• Free, unrestricted use
• Human and machine-readable data formats in the same resources
• Supports RESTful architecture
• Emphasis on web technologies

What FHIR Means for Healthcare IT Monitoring?

Using popular, well documented web standards to exchange healthcare data will lower the barrier-to-entry for healthcare providers that want to find new ways to monitor and derive insights from that clinical and patient data. If you are interested in improving patient care and satisfaction through technology, you should take a good look at FHIR. From the looks of things, FHIR promises an easier way to develop greater interoperability and mechanisms for data sharing in healthcare. The current inability for electronic systems to speak the same language to one another and to efficiently and correctly transmit information to be interoperable is among the most pressing issues facing health care stakeholders today.

What is FHIR 4 and how can it help health IT interoperability?

FHIR surfaced in healthcare almost five years ago as a Draft Standard for Technical Use (DTSU) that leveraged existing, well-established, web-based standard concepts altered to fit clinical data exchange. The modern interoperability standard is an essential component of health information exchange in modern health IT and in early 2019, had the 4th release, or R4. 

FHIR 4 builds upon the legacy of DTSU2 and v3, and like previous versions, this version lets data travel in discrete pieces. Along with RESTful application programming interfaces (API), the version also includes additional stability for several of the standard’s elements, which will result in fewer challenges in leveraging it. 

FHIR 4 is a balloted and passed standard that would be a normative standard, which means the specification is considered ready for use and stable, and further FHIR versions will be required to be backward compatible with the R4 components. This would make building apps off this version easier to be supported for the foreseeable future. 

References:

https://datascience.nih.gov/foa/fast-healthcare-interoperability-resources-fhir-standard

https://www.managedhealthcareexecutive.com/view/fhir-interoperability-what-it-and-why-should-we-care

https://www.hl7.org/fhir/healthcareservice.html

IT solutions in the healthcare industry have already simplified life for both doctors and patients. However, the issue of patients’ data privacy remains a sore point.

Below are four useful tips to assist health systems and hospitals in reinforcing and better enhancing the safety of their healthcare data. These security practices and measures aim to help these organizations address imminent risks to data privacy, keep pace with continually evolving threats and also effectively protect patients’ personal information.

1.    Educate Personnel on Security Best Practices

The “human element” remains among the biggest security threats across multiple industries, healthcare included.

 Security awareness training not only equips healthcare staff with the essential knowledge necessary for making wise decisions, but it also ensures that they use appropriate precautionary measures when handling patient data.

2.    Routine Risk Assessment

Experts recommend that healthcare organizations perform risk assessment sessions on a regular basis to determine the vulnerabilities of their systems. By identifying weak links within their data security systems, healthcare organizations can effectively fix any issues before they arise.

It is a good idea for healthcare providers to even consider conducting these assessments more than once yearly-perhaps monthly or quarterly for maximum safety.

3.    Access Control: Restricting Access to Applications and Data

Controlling access to private health records is also another crucial way of enhancing the overall security of patient data. How can organizations do this? By ensuring that only the certified and essential personnel are granted access to sensitive data. This reduces the risks of data breaches and theft.

When you implement access control, you can effectively reinforce healthcare data security. This is by restricting access to specific applications and sensitive patient information only to the individual needing access to carry out their duties. Access restrictions require user authentication, and this ensures that authorized users only gain access to protected healthcare data.

Multi-factor authentication, which mandates for users to verify their identities through two or more methods of validation, is among the most-recommended approaches you can use.

Furthermore, whenever possible, healthcare organizations can engage this essential personnel in their two-factor authentication. You can incorporate thumb scanning and retina scanning technology or subsequently adopt a mobile authentication system for all the staff with access to sensitive records and then log them into the security system.

Some security systems can even allow you to create distinct passwords and logins for every staff member you would like to allow access to confidential data. By diversifying access keys in such a manner, these organizations make it more difficult for any hackers or outside individuals to crack and breach their code.

4.    Encryption, Encryption, Encryption!

Encryption is undoubtedly among the most effective methods of data protection across all industries, not just in healthcare. Data, either in-transit or stored, needs to be encrypted on every device within the system. This includes computers, cell phones, USB drives, tablets, and laptops.

Encrypting data allows healthcare organizations and stakeholders to minimize their susceptibility to data breaches and cyber-attacks effectively. Encryption ideally makes it harder (virtually impossible) for a hacker to decipher personal patient data even if they manage to breach and subsequently gain access to the information. Extraction of data from unencrypted stolen devices can amount to millions of dollars in losses.

Summary

While taking a sophisticated, multi-faceted security approach and measures may appear exhausting, where valuable and sensitive patient healthcare information is at risk, these additional security measures can guarantee protection.

To effectively keep up with the continually emerging security risks, it is crucial for healthcare providers to improve their data security and protection with these few approaches.

Learn more about data security in healthcare:

https://www.hipaajournal.com/secure-patient-information-phi/

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1215258

https://academic.oup.com/jamia/article/14/2/239/863754

 

 

Healthcare data migration from legacy system is getting complex and critical with advent of RIS, CVIS, EHR, EMR, CPOE and other data driven information systems employed in today’s healthcare industry to deliver best medical care.

Healthcare industry is creating massive volumes of structured and unstructured data, digital imaging and video content each year. Healthcare data migration is not a simple process of extracting data from one source and transfer to new source. Migrating data to new EHR (Electronic Health Record) systems require error free data migration expertise and proven technology.

PACS Data Migration and Implementation

Whether implementing a PACS for the first time or changing PACS software or adding new interfaces with multiple systems within healthcare network impact legacy data archive that may not be accessible or read from backup media. When managing PACS changes, it’s important to find a provider with PACS data migration expertise to help you in extracting data from old (legacy system), validate and transfer to new system and also maintain uninterrupted patient care.

Healthcare Data Storage & Management

Planning for upgrading your healthcare network data storage for short term/ long term strategy to a highly scalable data storage or storage vendor changes may result in data loss and downtime. Demand for massive data storage from the healthcare industry is on the rise with expectation of a highly manageable system at reduced costs means frequent vendor changes.

In specific to healthcare IT, there are different migration in terms of databases, standards, and compliance, such as the following:

• Migration from ICD9 to ICD10
• CCD to CCDA Standard
• Impact Analysis
• ICD 9 to ICD 10 Mapping and Vice Versa
• 4010 Standards to 5010 Standards (for Billing Systems)
• DICOM Migration and many more.

 

Healthcare Data Migration: 
4 Keys to Successful Implementation

1. Develop a Long-Term Migration Strategy

  Data migration must not be treated as a quick fix. While it will certainly solve some immediate problems, healthcare companies need to make projections for at least five years when making decisions. 

2. Specify the Data for Migration

 Not every migration requires a complete relocation of all data available. Some legacy systems and data may be left in their place or moved to a different location from the other data assets in a few cases.

For this reason, taking a complete inventory of all existing data assets and deciding whether or not to move them is a necessity. When data must be transferred, the desired destination must be identified. This will prevent delays or confusion when the migration gets to a critical stage and changes become more costly and challenging to implement. 

3. Maintain Data Integrity

 Data integrity ensures that data remains accurate, consistent, and reliable while moving from one system to another. Adequate error checking and validation procedures must be in place to ensure that data is not altered or duplicated during transfer.

Most of the work required to preserve data integrity must be done during the pre-planning stage. 

4. Use a Hybrid Storage Solution

 Consider using a cloud-based storage solution to augment your on-premises storage. Many cloud service providers now offer better security, access restrictions and reliability than most in-house IT teams can provide. Cloud infrastructure enables healthcare companies to quickly acquire more storage and computing resources as needed.

While regulatory compliance requires providers to maintain in-house servers to store sensitive data, most patient health records can be kept and managed in the cloud. Using a hybrid solution that combines physical and cloud infrastructure may be the best option for large healthcare providers

References

https://journalofbigdata.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40537-019-0217-0

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-11361-2_11

https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-018-5932-5