Response 4-3 (CET)
The United States health care system is increasingly moving away from paper records and integrating electronic health data into their operations (Meingast et al., 2006). Such a move comes with its setbacks, such as security of the health data, health care professionals obtain from patients. The current legal framework that attempts to protect patient data is HIPAA regulations. However, most nurses and doctors do not know how to protect patient data besides as elucidated under the HIPAA regulations. Such a problem stems from the fact they were not exposed to any data protection mechanisms besides the HIPAA regulations when in school. This set of circumstances prohibits them from comprehending the risks and vulnerabilities of using electronic health care data.
As time progresses, so does the intensity of cyberattacks targeting health care data (Meingast et al., 2006). Health care professionals, especially healthcare students, are ill-equipped to guarantee patient data safety, considering they know little beyond the safeguards provided for under the HIPAA regulations. Technology is a continually evolving phenomenon, which means that safeguards in place to ensure data protection have to change when technology evolves. However, failure to inculcate into health care students' data protection mechanisms beyond the HIPPA regulations, makes most of them rigid (Abouelmehdi et al., 2018). They might lack the requisite know-how to advise their patients with regards to the security of health data when health care technology gets sophisticated.
Most of the privacy issues they encounter revolve around who has the right to access patient information, how will the data obtained get stored, matters to do with data transfer, and who has data analysis rights (Meingast et al., 2006). As a society, America holds privacy in high regard, which is why most of them are concerned with the security of the health data they share with medical personnel (Abouelmehdi et al., 2018). Their concern stems from the fact that the information they share contains very intimate details about their lives they would not wish for other people to see. Therefore, patients need to understand all the implications of handing out personal medical information to health care professionals before they do so. Such a failure, coupled with the increased absorption of electronic health records, exposes patient information to data breaches, and privacy intrusions. Medical colleges need to recognize and correct the flaws in their curriculum that prevent them from inculcating extensive data protection mechanisms into health care students.
References
Abouelmehdi, K., Beni-Hessane, A., & Khaloufi, H. (2018). Big Healthcare data: Preserving Security and Privacy. Journal of Big Data, 5(1).
Meingast, M., Rosta, T., & Sastry, S. (2006). Security and Privacy Issues with Health Care Information Technology. In 2006 International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Retrieved from https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu.viewdoc/download?