Healthcare App Data Sharing – Do’s and Don’ts

healthcare app

healthcare appBy: Steven Boyne

I recently wrote an article titled The Top Five Legal Concerns When Developing a Healthcare App, and I received some follow up questions, including technical queries about encryption and data sharing.  To answer these questions, it is important to understand the current Healthcare App state of affairs.  Various reporters, governmental agencies and privacy watchdogs have installed and monitored the flow of data from Healthcare Apps installed on smart phones.  These journals, articles and enforcement actions taken together provide a roadmap for Do’s and Don’ts for the sharing of data.

Almost all Healthcare Apps are free and have some disclosures about how they share your data, and both iOS and Android require the user to give permission to the newly installed App, but who really pays attention to that?  Almost no one.  However, this doesn’t mean that an App developer shouldn’t embrace best practices to avoid liability and bad press.Continue reading

Critical Steps to Help Avoid Cybersecurity Attacks

hipaa securityBy: Gary Salman, Guest Contributor

Ransomware attacks are impacting the healthcare community’s HIPAA security at a staggering rate. If a practice has data stolen from their network and they did not report the breach to The Office of Civil Rights (OCR), they could be subject to massive fines for the lack of reporting. Specific steps must be followed to determine if ePHI (electronic protected health information) was compromised. This often involves hiring a forensics company and working with a Cybersecurity company to harden the practice’s infrastructure. When you are the victim of an attack once, you will mostly likely be a victim again because of vulnerabilities in your network that enabled the attack vector (or payload) to infiltrate your system. You cannot simply restore your data and hope for the best.Continue reading