The future lies in emerging technologies, and the healthcare industry has seen an abundance of innovations meant to improve patient lives, care, and experiences. The evolution of healthcare IT offers both exciting opportunities and daunting challenges, including the need to protect the data generated from these disruptive technologies.
New technologies in healthcare are understandably data heavy. Here, we explore four innovations that impact healthcare data security.
Telemedicine
Telemedicine is already transforming the healthcare industry and is rapidly growing in popularity. The use of telemedicine rose from less than 1 million telehealth users in 2013 to over 7 million in 2018. Mobile apps that offer video or phone conferencing with a doctor or nurse are also becoming an increasingly adopted health plan benefit.
In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2023, virtual encounters will exceed face-to-face care delivery encounters, resulting in a dramatic realignment of clinical care and health IT.
Should these virtual systems go down or experience data loss, physical medical facilities might not be able to cope with the patient influx. Ensuring these systems are always available and protecting the data within these apps is critical to guaranteeing the highest quality of service for users.
Genomics
The Human Genome Project was initiated in 1990 as an international scientific research project to identify and map all the genes of the human genome. Since the conclusion of the 13-year, $2.7 billion project, technological advances allow for faster, less costly genome mapping, which offers insight into variants within each person that cause or contribute to health conditions.
Researchers have found that variations in genomes can “influence if we develop a disease, how that disease progresses, and how we respond to medications.” Scientists use the information from genomic research to prevent and treat disease and ultimately improve health.
With The Human Genome project estimating that humans have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes, the amount of data involved in this space is astronomical. And the importance of protecting that data to ensure it isn’t breached or misused cannot be overstated.
3-D printing
The development of 3-D printing completely revolutionized the healthcare industry with the ability to cost effectively create prosthetics, organs and tissue. And 3-D printing not only helps improve the lives of patients who benefit from custom-made limbs or tissues, it can also help doctors prepare for surgeries by developing printed replicas ahead of procedures.
With so much potential to impact healthcare, the growth of 3-D printing is on the rise. According to the Medical Device Network, “it has been forecast that 3D printing in the medical field will be worth $3.5 billion by 2025, compared to $713.3 million in 2016.”
When it comes to blueprints for 3-D printed prosthetics or organs and the research and documentation on outcomes, the incredible amount of data generated through this transformative innovation must be safeguarded and available to ensure the benefits of 3-D printing are achievable by those who need it most.
Population health management
According to Philips Healthcare, population health management (PHM) “is the aggregation of patient data across multiple health information technology resources, the analysis of that data into a single, actionable patient record, and the actions through which care providers can improve both clinical and financial outcomes.” The definition alone references big data and data analytics. And with all this data being used to meet the ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes by maximizing population health, there comes the need to protect that data and ensure that it is available for its intended purposes.
Meet your data protection needs of tomorrow, today
As the wave of innovation accelerates, it’s more essential than ever that healthcare organizations have an up-to-date data protection solution that is able to support upcoming industry shifts and transformations.
Ensure that data generated by emerging technologies is safeguarded with a trusted data protection solution from Arcserve. Arcserve Unified Data Protection (UDP) offers better data protection for new, data-heavy healthcare technologies.
