data security
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Ransomware Costs N.Y. Hospital Nearly $10M
A hospital that lost control of its computers last spring when hackers unleashed ransomware on its systems has paid nearly $10 million recovering in the past few months. The hackers had demanded nearly $30,000 worth of bitcoin as ransom, but officials with Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo, New York, declined, knowing there would be no guarantee that the attackers would fully remove their malicious software once paid off, The Buffalo News reported Wednesday.
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Report Finds Health, Fitness Apps Lag in Privacy Polices Compared to Other Apps
Health and fitness apps may potentially reveal data-enabled insights into the daily lives of those who use them, but what they sometimes fail to reveal are the ways they use the data collected on users. A recent study from the Future of Privacy Forumfound that -- compared with other apps in the iOS and Android marketplaces -- health and fitness apps lag in privacy policies, with about 60 percent offering such information compared to 76 percent of general apps...
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Report Highlights Positive Elements of U.S. Government Open Source Adoption
I think we've all read our fair share of reports about lessons learned and the challenges and opportunities for governments taking up open source software. Frankly, many of them seem a bit dry, and often repetitive. But one study I recently came across (that has not received much media coverage) stood out. Its predicate was different that most, recognizing the positive: open source software (OSS) "is being used in [the U.S.] government, as well as being released by the government (as both minor improvements and whole new projects), and the government is receiving benefits from doing so. However, many in government are unaware of this." In short, it appears to find the glass half filled—or better—rather than half empty...
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Revealed: Google AI Has Access to Huge Haul of NHS Patient Data
It’s no secret that Google has broad ambitions in healthcare. But a document obtained by New Scientist reveals that the tech giant’s collaboration with the UK’s National Health Service goes far beyond what has been publicly announced. The document – a data-sharing agreement between Google-owned artificial intelligence company DeepMind and the Royal Free NHS Trust – gives theclearest picture yet of what the company is doing and what sensitive data it now has access to...
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Senators Launch Probe Of Massive Data Breaches
Several senators repeated calls for legislation to ward off massive data thefts during a hearing Monday to review the vulnerability of the nation's digital-payment systems, the first in a trio of sessions this week examining the enormous breaches sustained recently at retailers around the country. Read More »
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Silicon gurney: EHR go-lives turn hospitals into software shops
Hospitals invest so much money in EHR implementations that it changes the very nature of their organization. And that means they need to think about operating more like a software company than just a hospital. If $100 million sounds like an exorbitant or even unrealistic ticket for an electronic health records platform, in fact, consider that Kaiser Permanente, Mayo Clinic and Partners HealthCare have publicly acknowledged spending an order of magnitude more than that — while other hospitals such as Scripps Health, Lehigh Valley Health Network, Lahey Hospital Medical Center and Lifespan revealed budgets bigger than $100 million. And that’s just to rattle off a fistful...
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Strengthening Protection of Patient Medical Data
Americans seeking medical care expect a certain level of privacy. Indeed, the need for patient privacy is a principle dating back to antiquity, and is codified in U.S. law, most notably the Privacy Rule of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which establishes standards that work toward protecting patient health information. But the world of information is rapidly changing, and in this environment, U.S. rules fall precariously short in protecting our medical data...
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Study: Patients Want Online Access To Medical Images
In a new study by IDR Medical and Carestream Health, researchers found that patients were interested in accessing medical images such as x-rays, CT scans, and mammograms through an online patient portal, with 68% saying it was “extremely likely” they would do so if given the option. Read More »
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The 5 Essentials of Cloud Computing For Clinical Trials
The pharmaceutical industry has been historically slow in adopting new technologies and it is only now that we are beginning to see the emergence of cloud based eClinical systems for the clinical trial industry. This article explores the true definition of cloud computing as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and applies it to eClinical systems. Read More »
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The Best Way to Share Health Records? An App in Patients’ Hands
Much has been written recently about information blocking—the inability or unwillingness of hospitals and doctors to share electronic data from our health records with one another. Lack of technical interoperability and regulations protecting security, privacy, and confidentiality are often blamed. But the reality is that technical barriers are falling. The same technology that enables your smartphone to pull sensitive financial data from your bank to pay your taxes or a taxi driver can be applied to your health care records. More importantly, the regulatory path to health records sharing is now open—the rules are already on the books.
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The HITECH Era in Retrospect
At a high level, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009 accomplished something miraculous: the vast majority of U.S. hospitals and physicians are now active users of electronic health record (EHR) systems. No other sector of the U.S. economy of similar size (one sixth of the gross domestic product) and complexity (more than 5000 hospitals and more than 500,000 physicians) has undergone such rapid computerization...
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The Linux Foundation Announces 2017 Events Schedule
The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit advancing professional open source management for mass collaboration, today announced its 2017 events schedule. Linux Foundation events are where the creators, maintainers and practitioners of the world's most important open source projects meet. Linux Foundation events in 2016 attracted over 20,000 developers, maintainers, sysadmins, thought leaders, business executives and other industry professionals from more than 4,000 organizations across 85 countries...
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The New Health IT Arms Race Between The US And EU
If you were to ask anyone in the United States what “health access” meant to them, you would get a different answer. In the UK, for most people, it means the ability to access National Health Service (NHS) amenities.
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The Pathway to Patient Data Ownership and Better Health
Digital health data are rapidly expanding to include patient-reported outcomes, patient-generated health data, and social determinants of health. Measurements collected in clinical settings are being supplemented by data collected in daily life, such as data derived from wearable sensors and smartphone apps, and access to other data, such as genomic data, is rapidly increasing. One projection suggests that a billion individuals will have their whole genome sequenced in the next several years. These additional sources of data, whether patient-generated, genomic, or other, are critical for a comprehensive picture of an individual’s health...
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The President’s Precision Medicine Initiative – The First Annual Check-Up
Watching President Obama’s recent 2016 State of the Union Address reminded me that one year has passed since the President announced a new “precision” or personalized medicine initiative to advance personalized, effective therapies for the American public. It was during his 2015 State of the Union Address that the President stated:[1]
“[T]onight, I’m launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes, and to give all of us access to the personalized information we need to keep ourselves and our families healthier. We can do this.”...
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