Several months ago I heard the exciting news that a doctor invented an iPad app to replicate an electrocardiogram at a fraction of the cost of its being done in a doctor's office. I'm trying to understand why the use of this hasn't accelerated. Doctors' offices are often busy. Insurance companies are always trying to control costs. And, of course, this could help prevent heart attacks and strokes. So what gives?
I can't answer that part, but I can remind health care providers and insurance companies of one thing: security on mobile devices must not be overlooked. This app is an awesome idea. Someone holds the iPhone in his hands and it can replicate the measurements of an ECG and send it to the doctor. But that also means tracing the patient's name, address, date of birth and electronic medical records, which often have the Social Security number as well. No pun intended, but you don't want a patient to have a heart attack because he found out that his identity was stolen while doing an anywhere ECG via an app!
I am completely apolitical, so I have not done much hand wringing about the government shutdown. However, I just read that the furloughs at the Veterans Affairs Department means stopping software development.
That sounds sort of harmless, but what is under the radar here is that the processing of veterans' claims will be affected. And then what? The VA Office of Information and Technology sent 2,754 employees home. That's the size of an impressive corporation.
During the many years I've been working, I've experienced several layoffs. Once it was because the financial meltdown five years ago caused a company I worked for to lay off 20 percent of its personnel six months later. At other times, the contracts I had expired and the end client wanted someone cheaper. At many companies, the thinking is flawed. You need all hands on deck in certain departments. You need toll collectors, even though many drivers have transponders. It's like the Emergency Department of a hospital. You need doctors and nurses, a phlebotomist to draw blood, a technician to perform CT scans and MRIs, and a radiologist to read the results -- 24/7. Just because the CEO may not be prone to getting kidney stones doesn't mean that others may not suffer attacks and need medical care urgently.
Trying to save money by cutting personnel, either with furloughs or permanently, is a temporary stop gap measure. It's like taking out an uninfected appendix in order to lose a few ounces. The decision makers at the top need to see in the future and realize that there may be consequences down the road. You don't need a crystal ball for that. You can be sure that the VA is going to have a huge backlog because a few politicians can't decide on the budget.
Hey, you, on Photoshop! Yes, you. I know you bought Photoshop Elements to enhance photos of your kids. Or maybe you bought Adobe InDesign in order to create your own marketing materials. Or you want the full-blown version of Adobe Acrobat because the free reader isn't enough for your needs.
Better check your credit card statements. Brad Arkin, Adobe's chief security officer, admitted in a blog post that hackers removed company data. Adobe has been shifting to the business model of pay as you go. Instead of buying the software in disk form, customers will be forced into leasing it and constantly updating it.
My wife and I don't upgrade with every version of any software we use for personal use because the changes are usually minor and the cost is unnecessary. So when Adobe started this shift, my security antenna went up. We use one-time credit card numbers for our online purchases. If we had an open number on file, the hackers who tapped into Adobe would have our credit cards numbers, even though the data was encrypted. Adobe claims that they don't believe that any decrypted numbers were taken, but I wouldn't count on that. By the way, 2.9 million Adobe customers are at risk. The hackers have their credit or debit card numbers, expiration dates and even information pertaining to their orders.
And I hate to break it to you, but all your fancy artwork isn't nearly as creative as some hackers.
A report from Frost and Sullivan called U.S. Patient Portal Market for Hospitals and Physicians: Overview and Outlook, 2012-2017 predicts that patient portal use will increase by 221.1 percent. (For those who like dollar signs, that's an expected growth to $898.4 million in 2017.)
I tend to request my medical records on CD, but my wife uses patient portals extensively. They're terrific. She prints out the vaccination records for the kids to give to the school nurses. She can verify the dosage of medication the kids may have if they get sick. She can check appointments.
So what's the problem? There isn't any as long as the system she uses is secure. Her physician's practice requires every patient to pay for their patient portal. (Mine doesn't, so it is not a requirement for patients to pay a fee for it.) He told her that the practice has to pay extra insurance costs to prevent hacking.
That's the concern I always have. The patient portal she uses does not have our home address or Social Security numbers, but just the name and date of birth are two critical pieces of information need for identity theft. The rest is not hard to find. My wife found her late father's Social Security number on a government website. Is it any wonder that identity theft is an ongoing concern?
www.healthcareIT.frost.com
