5 Security Issues In Healthcare Giving Rise To Medical Identity Theft 

In the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI), data is everything. From handwritten prescriptions to remote diagnosis and medication, the healthcare ‘industry is also digitizing its work behaviours. In the current situation, where every other business is facing identity theft fraud, the healthcare industry is no exception. Security issues in healthcare are touching new heights that stimulated regulatory authorities to design sophisticated Know Your Patients (KYP) laws in order to reduce fraud threats to a minimum. 

In many countries, healthcare industries still practice paper-based records for collecting patients’ medical history and the information stored digitally still sits idle in the computer systems. This required the professionals to incorporate proficient systems in their work to secure the medical data of the patients and eliminate security issues in healthcare. 

Security Issues In Healthcare Industry 

There are many security issues in healthcare that are causing medical identity theft which ultimately puts patients, hospitals, and insurance companies in trouble. Following is the brief on security challenges to combat frauds associated with the healthcare sector:

• Outdated Technology 

As big as an industry healthcare sector is, its work operations still lack updated technologies. The type of equipment used in hospitals are very old and do not fulfil the requirements of today’s needs. Machinery and other related tools used by doctors are not useful to counter the challenges that patients are coming with. Similar to equipment, the software provided by the servers is so old that they do not even have their replicas now in the market. Advancement in technology and modern machinery is the desperate need for the hospitals if they want to facilitate their patients in a good way and to comply with know your patient services. 

• Human Error 

As already said, the healthcare industry lacks the necessary modernized ways of keeping records of the patient’s data. Doctors,  healthcare providers, insurance companies and all the other related work bodies that you think of while talking about healthcare, perform their tasks manually and managing the data records is also their responsibility to perform. In this situation, where entities are manually doing the patient identity tasks, the probability of human error rises in the process. 

You cannot guarantee hundred percent results when it’s the human mind behind the know your patient process. Similarly, one of the causes of security issues in healthcare is the work done by human resources. 

• Risks Are Ignored 

There is no doubt in the fact that problems increase when we take them for granted and do nothing to save our organizations from their threats. Sometimes companies have that attitude of like “how is it possible, it can never happen to me”. This sort of behaviour makes the businesses suffer a lot with security issues in healthcare when they ignore the chances of potential theft frauds. 

• Cloud Technology 

Many businesses are looking at cloud technology to secure their data. It is beneficial to some extent as well but has its challenges attached. If adopted from a cloud service provider, data saving can easily complicate an already complex process. 

The healthcare industry using the cloud in their system is mitigating the threats of risks no doubt, but the security issues in healthcare are still there. The main reason for this is, hospitals take the cloud services from a third party. It reflects that you can’t build in-house cloud server technology. Therefore, before collaborating with any cloud provider, businesses need to check 

• If the service provider is serious about taking the security of the data
• Their old client relationship

Unfortunately, taking third-party services means you have to rely upon their work behaviors but it is not unfortunate to a great extent because the majority of them take their job seriously and deploy all the necessary measures to keep the records safe.  

• Valuable Healthcare Data 

Medical data is considered as “oil” considering its importance in the market. Medical records are more precious than credit card information. The latter will only be used once before the card gets blocked. While the former one will be used many times and for many purposes. On the dark web, the patients’ records are sold at higher prices than any other information and it is bought extensively. Know your patient is the only way to secure sensitive patients’ information from getting into the hands of criminals. 

Conclusion 

Security issues in healthcare are increasing because of all the above-mentioned reasons. The regulatory authority Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act (HIPAA) has designed know your patient laws for the healthcare sector to abide by in order to enhance health information security measures.