It is a U.S. law that establishes privacy and security provisions to protect health information. The legislation has become more important in recent times along with the numerous breaches of health information caused by cyberattacks and ransomware attacks on insurers and health care providers. If you’re creating an e-health or cellular wellness program, it’s crucial to decide if your apps can be subject to HIPAA requirements for medical app programs. Additionally, it’s crucial to create a HIPAA compliant texting system that is accessible to everyone. If you don’t, you could be liable for tens of thousands or perhaps millions of dollars if the use of your program results in the unauthorized disclosure of health information that HIPAA protects.
Goal of HIPAA
HIPAA goals on two main purposes. The first one is to provide ongoing health insurance coverage for employees who lose or change jobs and ultimately reduce healthcare costs by standardizing the electronic transmission of financial and administrative transactions. Other goals include combating fraud, abuse, and waste in health insurance and health care, and improving access to long-term care providers and health insurance.
HIPAA Privacy Rule
The HIPAA Privacy Rule aims to protect patient privacy by requiring physicians to provide patients with a report on any matter to which the physician discloses PHI for administrative and billing functions while allowing related health information to flow through appropriate channels. It also requires covered entities working with a HIPAA business associate to create a contract that imposes specific safeguards on PHI that the BA applies or uses. This rule also guarantees the patients’ right to receive their own PHI from healthcare providers covered by HIPAA.
Guide to Making Your Healthcare Software HIPAA Compliant
Whether you’re in mobile software development (Android or even iOS) or web software development, security will always be a priority. Therefore, it will be helpful to understand the compliance framework to adhere to the basic rules and regulations. When creating your custom software solutions, here are some points to ensure HIPAA compliance.
1. Clear and Comprehensive Role and Responsibility
As you allow data access to authorized users only, you need to review your software structure and make sure you have clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Thorough testing will help you ensure data security and accessibility.
2. Constantly-Validated Security System
The program must authenticate itself after a certain period of inactivity. Here is a quick checklist for you and quick security steps for your application/software. First of all, the program can mechanically log off after a certain period of inactivity. PHI should not be stored in incredibly vulnerable copies and log documents.
3. Minimum Exposure
Limit sharing and use of PHI to authorized access only. Also, make sure that no one has access to see or store information that is not relevant. Avoid using any cache to obtain ePHI. Arrangements must be made for the secure transfer and storage of data via the cloud. This means for you personally: data collected and stored in the cloud must also be HIPAA compliant.