In late 2020, a CEO at an American bank revealed the thinking that’s becoming common in many businesses these days. “We’re a 103-year-old bank,” their CEO told me. “We’re doing everything on spreadsheets. But we are trying to become a highly profitable, digital-first bank that anticipates financial needs and empowers our clients with frictionless experiences. We need to become a data company.”
As COVID-19 vaccinations continue to roll out, organizations across industries prepare to return employees to the workplace. It’s a journey fraught with anxieties, uncertainty, and unknowns. In a recent poll of Appian webinar participants, a mere 17% reported that their companies feel fully prepared to reopen facilities, and only 51% said they felt even “somewhat” prepared. The good news is that a safe return to the workplace is not uncharted territory.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA for short, is a set of laws around handling health-related data in information systems. It defines safeguards, which are rules you have to follow when handling health data for your customers. There are three safeguard categories: All three categories have to be handled correctly if you want your API to be HIPAA compliant. In a companion article we covered those key requirements and how to build HIPAA complaint API platforms.
We dare you to go to your mobile device and search for a health and wellness app already installed. Truth is, even if you did not actually download it, your operating system most likely came with at least one app like that. Now, you might have chosen to delete such an app, in which case, we lost the dare. But it does not deny the fact that your mobile device, the very one that lets you shop, communicate, work, or travel, has just as much potential to assist in your well-being.
Legal disclaimer: Nothing stated herein is legal advice. It is provided for informational purposes only. You should work closely with legal advisors to determine exactly how HIPAA may affect your business. Health care represents 17% of US GDP, around $4 trillion in 2020. COVID has normalized the use of remote medicine and accelerated the dispersion of health care away from doctors’ offices and hospitals, to services being delivered on smartphones and online apps.
When cyberattacks take out business systems, organizations suffer from direct and indirect financial losses. When healthcare systems go down, it’s a matter of life and death. Healthcare organizations were already a frequent target of cybercriminals, and the pandemic has made this situation worse. Infosecurity Magazine reports that healthcare data breaches will increase by 3x in 2021, at a time when so many healthcare providers are burnt out and exhausted from battling the pandemic.
