Data breach is a constant worry for many companies in our digital age where an abundance of sensitive information is transmitted over both secure and insecure networks. Healthcare organizations aren’t immune to this condition. In the last year, it is estimated that data breaches cost the healthcare industry $6.5 billion.

 

One way for healthcare providers to mitigate the costs of a data breach is to purchase insurance against it. The popularity of this cyber insurance is growing as the incidence of data breaches in the healthcare world is on the rise.

 

Similar to the field of medicine, preventing data breaches is cheaper and has less of a detrimental impact than remedying the problem after the fact. CareFusion’s Alaris System helps foil data leaks before they happen by encrypting data before sending them wirelessly to remote monitors. The Alaris System is the first infusion device to meet the strict requirements to operate in VA hospital networks. Alaris allows healthcare providers to accurately manage various medications that need to be delivered intravenously such as antibiotics and chemotherapy drugs.

 

Alaris goes a long way to preventing data breach, not only by hackers, but also by eliminating needless printing of patient information on paper. The majority of HIPAA violations are still due to the careless management of confidential patient files or inadvertent references to patients during conversation.

 

A complete movement toward electronic health records would help solve part of this issue, but it doesn’t look that will happen anytime soon. Until then maybe someone could develop a way to prevent absentmindedness…