HIPAA versus The Cloud

If you are involved in health care information technology (IT), you know all about the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the responsibility it puts on the organization to protect patient information. In the early days of HIPAA regulations, there were only general guidel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Health Care Compliance 2011-09, Vol.13 (5), p.57
Main Author: Witt, Chris
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
American Recovery & Reinvestment Act 2009-US
Cloud computing
Compliance
Computer centers
Data integrity
Health care industry
Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act 1996-US
Information technology
Infrastructure
Privacy
Virtual private networks
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Summary:If you are involved in health care information technology (IT), you know all about the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the responsibility it puts on the organization to protect patient information. In the early days of HIPAA regulations, there were only general guidelines and required outcomes to help direct IT departments in reaching compliance. The fact that most organizations maintained a "closed" system, meaning they had their own data center with very little data being exposed outside of the organization, made compliance relatively simple. Over time, data center strategies have evolved to include collocation and managed services. Now, cloud computing has been added to the mix of service options. This adds some interesting HIPAA compliance challenges, since absolute end-to-end control of the data is no longer assured. For HIPAA, data privacy is a key component.
ISSN:1520-8303