Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Security is Essential NO Matter the System Type
No matter if a system is proprietary or open source, health systems in general must place security at the forefront of its agenda items. Protecting personal health information should be the fundamental element of all health systems, no matter whether they are proprietary or open source. Recently, a hacker stole 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions from the state of Virginia's health records system. This is a harsh wake-up call for the healthcare industry. Even though there is a dramatic push for healthcare providers to adopt health systems today, each healthcare provider must walk carefully and cautiously in its adoption of an electronic system. Security is essential and must be present in all health systems before adopting them. The debate between open source vs. proprietary health systems must be halted momentarily as a pressing need arises for all healthcare software providers to collaborate to guarantee the protection of American health records. There will be a severe backlash against any type of health system and their adoption if EHR's cannot be secured.
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A news came up today on Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems. Maybe while they are researching on "meaningful use", they can elaborate or raise the issue of adopting open source EMR. We will see how things evolve.
ReplyDeleteHopefully many can see the value in open source systems, or simply the need to have everyone on a system at the very least. In order to do that, open source has to become a viable option because so many of the smaller health care providers cannot simply brunt the cost of a proprietary system.
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