Online Storage and Keeping Health Information Safe
Posted by Juan Rojas on Mon, Aug 30, 2010 @ 02:46 PM
Healthcare organizations (including hospitals, claims administrators, doctors' offices, etc.) exist in a high-pressure, highly-regulated environment, and several of those regulations are about keeping and transferring patient data.
(Photo credit)
Regulations like HIPAA demand that healthcare organizations keep personally identifiable health information confidential, and that they track and report on how that information is accessed.
The challenge is that the systems used must not only be secure, but be simple enough that any staff who need to access the information can do so easily and effectively.
Email, though widely-adopted and easy to use, suffers from a lack of security and an ability to transfer only small files (10MB or less). FTP, though commonly used by IT professionals, is very complicated to use and very insecure.
Example
A local hospital has a wide variety of staff, clients and partners, not all of whom are on-site. Doctors and nurses need to access and update patient information on the fly, while hospital administrators have to manage the access given to the hospital’s billing service, who is then in contact with patients' insurance companies. They had previously used email and FTP – but their FTP system lacked encryption abilities, and email was becoming less scalable and using increasing amount of server resources. To top it all off, neither system lets them manage workflow or enforce appropriate access to patient records.
The solution is online file transfer and storage. These services (like FilesDIRECT) let healthcare organizations store data offsite, which gives redundancy of important information and reduces server load.
FilesDIRECT’s “One-Click Send” system is easy to use; with a simple, customizable public upload page. This allows hospital staff and partners to use the system without time-consuming (and expensive!) training.
Our online file transfers use the same level of encryption as banks and major online retailers (like Amazon). This means healthcare organizations can rest assured their patient information is secure.
Simplicity, security, and built-in tracking means FilesDRECT is the perfect solution for HIPAA compliant file transfer.
Try it FREE today!