Healthcare Information Privacy and Security: Regulatory Compliance and Data Security in the Age of Electronic Health Records

Foreword

Thoughts on Privacy and Security from a Medical Professional

For those of us who have been on the journey to create an electronic patient medical record, we first must recognize that we are still in our infancy. There is much work to do. Our goal is noble and achievable. We will create one patient record, which all caregivers use. It will be up to date, it will contain all “knowable” information about the patient, and it will be available to all at the point of care—be that the hospital ER, the doctor’s office, an ER across the country, or the patient’s home. But we must be ever mindful that in our effort to codify the information, we run the risk of losing the rich story of the patient.

Throughout my medical training as well as my 25 ...