Concerns Over Patient Data Privacy and Security Breach in Healthcare Information Systems

Concerns Over Patient Data Privacy and Security Breach in Healthcare Information Systems The current rise in technological advancements is accompanied by significant revolutions in terms of technical systems integration into nearly every aspect of human service delivery. Healthcare delivery is one of the sectors that is highly adopting technical systems to improve the quality of service delivery, particularly in the wake of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Examples of electronic infrastructures currently crucial in healthcare delivery include clinical decision support systems, electronic health record systems, e-prescribing systems, and many forms of FTP servers. Up to date, these infrastructures have proved crucial and relevant in ensuring providers’ easier access to patient information at any point of service delivery hence, efficient and quality mechanisms for patient healthcare. Nonetheless, despite underlying significant improvements in healthcare delivery services, technological systems mark one of the biggest threats to patient safety, privacy, and security concerns over patient information. Rationale for the Data Privacy and Security Issue Selection All forms of services attributed to technology, not just information exchange, are crucial to care delivery at all levels of the healthcare delivery system, be it at the patient level, practitioner's level, organizational level, or the level encompassing political and economic environments. For instance, in order for a practitioner to effectively attend to a patient, there is a basic need for three types of clinical-based information — a patient’s health record, information on the constantly changing medical-evidence base, and the guiding standards on patient care (Proctor et al., 2005). The practitioner or care team will then require essentials such as decisionsupport, education, or training, communication, and information management tools to integrate the above information streams. The same kind of requirements applies to individual patients