Patient Confidentiality and Privacy Issues in Health Informatics
You will write a 5-6 page long Final Report which is the extension of your submitted Midterm Report, where you identified a problem within health informatics. Your Final Report should describe a new potential innovation or a technological solution for the identified problem.
The paper should:
Describe a background on the problem within health informatics (e.g., health behavior change technologies and theories discussed in class and in your readings), an idea for a new technology in that area, the details (along with a mockup/visual design or workflow of the technology), and the barriers or expected implementation issues in developing and marketing this technology.
The Final Report should be approximately 5-6 pages (not including references), single-spaced, and in 12-point Arial font, with 1-inch margins. Please use 8-10 or more new sources for your report and follow APA format for your citations. The final needs to have at least 10-20 sources, these may also include some of the sources from your midterm paper but extra sources are needed as well.
To summarize, in the paper, you will need:
1) Background/significance of the identified problem in the Midterm Report,
*Please do not spend more than 1-2 paragraphs on this section as we have it in your midterm and do not copy-paste from your midterm- summarize instead the main points.
2) A novel innovative solution to this problem. Do not simply explain a solution already being developed or implemented. This idea must be something YOU come up with to address this problem. Please ensure you do research to confirm this is a novel idea and not an idea already being developed. If your idea builds on a previous solution please explain how your idea is different or fills in gaps the previous solutions did not.
3) Description of technology/modeling approach.
(e.g., Describe the user interface. How does it work? What features are available and why? What accessibility features are built-in? What technological tools or algorithms are needed to develop it (step-by-step process)?)
4) Describe implementation barriers and ways to address them, and
5) The mockup/visual design or workflow of the technology
You can ask the teaching team for office hour appointments to discuss your questions/issues in a timely manner to avoid last-minute changes.
Note 1: To improve the readability of your document, we kindly ask that you include a separate cover page with the title (which won't be counted towards the page limit) and use appropriate headings and subheadings to structure your content.
Note 2: The mockup/visual design or workflow of the technology won't be counted toward the page limit.
Note 3: Each student must write and submit their own individual report unless you have chosen to collaborate with a classmate mentioned in your Midterm Report. In cases of group work involving two students, we expect a more comprehensive prototype to be included in the Final report.
Patient Confidentiality and Privacy Issues in Health Informatics
Author’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course Code and Name
Professor’s Name
Date
Patient Confidentiality and Privacy Issues in Health Informatics
Background/Significance of the Identified Problem
For an extended period, patient confidentiality and privacy have been vital in the healthcare sector. Patients cannot be willing to share their health problems if there is no data privacy. Besides, healthcare professionals cannot provide quality patient care if they do not comprehend their patients’ health issues. In that light, the existence and persistence of patient confidentiality and privacy contribute to the creation and maintenance of trusting relationships between physicians and patients, which lead to transparency in sharing relevant medical information (Lustgarten et al., 2020). Due to the rise of health informatics, there has been increasing complexity to ensure that patient data is safeguarded. As such, the primary problem in the medical field is ensuring patient confidentiality and privacy concerns. Since health informatics digitizes health data, it is becoming more complex to protect patient data. Many healthcare facilities have implemented electronic health records (EHR) systems to gather, store, and facilitate faster retrieval when the need arises. However, these digital systems come with significant security issues since they are prone to cyber-attacks, phishing, and other challenges that can lead to patient data exposure to unauthorized personnel. Since hospitals cannot avoid using EHR systems and other relevant health technologies due to their effectiveness and efficiency in fostering daily operations, it leaves them with only one option, which is to implement proper strategies to enhance patient data confidentiality and privacy. This report discusses an effective technology or solution that can be implemented to address the issue of patient privacy and confidentiality.
A Novel Innovative Solution to This Problem
The primary innovative solution to patient data confidentiality and privacy issues is the use of an encrypted blockchain database. In particular, encrypted blockchain databases have not been currently implemented in the healthcare sector, which is why an individual has suggested this effective and feasible solution. Blockchain technology is an emerging field that has attracted more attention, particularly in financial transactions. For example, it has been used in cryptocurrency, which can be recommended as one of the safest ways to send money anonymously. When it comes to the healthcare sector, sensitive information is shared between the patient and the physician. Digital technologies, such as EHR systems, gather all the patient data, including physical addresses, actual names, birthdates, email addresses, social security numbers, and other vital information. All these data are stored in a centralized cloud database, which is not designed to prioritize data privacy and security (Ghayvat et al., 2021). In other words, anyone with the right authentication and authorization details can access the data stored in these virtual databases. That is the primary reason that hackers find it easy to penetrate such technology systems since they can use social engineering tactics to obtain authentication and authorization details from the custodians of such databases. Besides, humans are the primary security loopholes to any technology system. The implementation of encrypted blockchain databases can eliminate the problem of patient privacy and confidentiality.
The encrypted blockchain database is a new technology that can lead to the designing, developing, and implementing of decentralized and tamper-proof cloud servers. The primary challenge of EHR systems is that they are hosted on the cloud. These centralized databases are vulnerable to cyber-attacks and if the patient data is accessed by unauthorized parties it is leaked on social media. Moreover, they have an increased security risk footprint, meaning that patient information cannot be protected from internal attacks (Chenthara et al., 2020). In other words, anyone with the right authorization and authentication details can access the databases and retrieve the information. For instance, a hacker who uses social engineering tactics to trick the EHR system administrator can obtain login details. In that case, these unauthorized personnel can get patient names, phone numbers, emails, social security numbers, physical addresses, and other vital data available in these virtual databases. Similarly, if the electronic gadget of someone authorized to access the EHR database is misplaced and falls into the wrong hands, it leads to a significant patient data security risk. That is why the innovative solution should address such vulnerabilities to alleviate patient data privacy and confidentiality.
The most significant thing about encrypted blockchain databases is that they are designed with the security data aspect in mind. Many technology systems are vulnerable since