Security Of Medical Records and Protected Health Information - Essay Example

Monaural stethoscope can be considered as the maiden application of technology in medicine, in less than two centuries technology has secured a commanding position in almost all specialties of medicine. Today, information technology is one such tool that is gradually empowering almost all the stakeholders involved in this domain of high social relevance, these stakeholders include health care delivery system, clinicians, patients and regulators. Researchers and practitioners in medicine have claimed that information technology boosts efficiency, reach, quality and safety of health care services and that telemedicine and electronic medical records are two of the prime applications of information technology in medicine.

It is intriguing to note that adoption of information technology in health care is dismally low and the scenario is even worse when it comes to adoption of electronic medical records. There are many reasons those impede adoption of information technology medicine. The reasons are specific to all actants from provider to consumer of health care services; security and interoperability for a health care delivery system; reimbursement, data ownership and security for clinicians; confidentiality of health information for patients.

Medicine being a safety as well as security critical domain, security and privacy are two prime concerns when it pertains to security of medical records and protected health information. The case in point mentioned at the start of this essay highlights the current state of affairs pertaining to the “security of medical records”. As per the remarkable and an insightful study on electronic medical records conducted by National Research Council Report (Stead and Lin 2009), electronic medical record implementations are unsafe, this finding reinforces our fears further (highlighted in the case pertaining to breaches in medical data of