We live in an era where technology permeates every aspect of our daily lives, from using smartphones to manage our daily activities to instant access to information via the internet, generating a huge amount of data, often beyond our control and vulnerable to companies and hackers. Among these data, more than 30% are personal and sensitive, such as healthcare data whose security must be ensured.
Data Security in Healthcare
Data security has always been a crucial issue for medical personnel, being bound to professional secrecy regarding health information. Therefore, even more so today, in the digital age where data dispersion is greater, attention must be paid to managing personal data. According to Art. 4 of the EU Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR), "personal data" means any information concerning an identified or identifiable natural person, and "health data" means personal data related to the physical or mental health of a natural person, including the provision of healthcare services, revealing information about their health status.
Therefore, to protect personal health data, it is necessary to prevent identification of the person, which is now possible thanks to the anonymization of certain elements, such as name, gender, or date of birth, through advanced cryptographic protocols. Indeed, encryption is the only system capable of rendering data unreadable and impossible to re-identify thanks to advanced mathematical algorithms.
Protecting Data through Technology
Privacy protection has become a priority for the Healthcare Sector, which must find a balance between access to data by patients and medical staff, and their protection, to ensure effective care without risking patient privacy.
For this reason, it is essential that healthcare facilities take responsibility for protecting data by offering safe and constantly updated solutions. For example, through the introduction of digital tools, such as electronic health records where patient information is stored digitally, it also becomes possible to create a system of access through authentication mechanisms to limit data access to authorised personnel only.
Safer and More Efficient Digital Data
The digitization of sensitive data, such as medical reports, represents a significant advancement in terms of both security and efficiency. Indeed, digitally stored data simplifies the organization and cataloging of medical records and eliminates the risk of physical loss or damage of paper materials. Moreover, the innovation of reports and electronic records creates "Empowerment" in the patient who can access all their data and have greater control of their health data. This is important both for making informed decisions regarding their care and for sharing information with other specialists, ensuring a complete view of the patient's clinical history. Furthermore, with the advent of Artificial Intelligence, health data will begin to have even greater value.
Conclusions
The digitization of medical records represents a significant advancement in the protection of sensitive data. Not only does it offer security and efficiency, but it lays the groundwork for further innovations in the field of cybersecurity and data processing. The transformation is just beginning!
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