Hacking and data leaks have become a common practice these days. Companies attacked by such hacking and data breaches have to face great consequences leading to loss of money and reputation. After multiple incidents, some policies and procedures have been implemented to prevent these issues.
If we talk about data only, healthcare is one industry that stores large amounts of sensitive data and is highly vulnerable to such attacks and data breaches. With time, the use of electronic health records has also increased, therefore it is a big responsibility of healthcare entities to protect patient security and privacy.
To help the healthcare industry with this, the US law implemented HIPAA. On a broader picture, the law states that any information related to the patient should not be disclosed to anyone without his/her permission or consent.
As electronic healthcare data management systems were also part of healthcare organization for maintaining ePHI but with the emergence of HIPAA, the HIPAA compliant software became prominent for healthcare business.
The app development process for HIPAA compliant software requires a dedicated team of developers with great experience and good understanding of HIPAA rules and regulations. But doing this can help healthcare entities a lot in protecting themselves from various data related issues.
Delving into this deep concept, this blog will help you understand the value of HIPPA-compliant software, the consequences of not implementing and using it, and what should be done to develop it correctly. Moreover, this blog will also help you understand the fundamental guidelines of HIPAA and learn how to appropriately assess threats so that robust security solutions may be implemented.
Furthermore, we will also introduce you to one of the best HIPAA compliant software development companies -GMTA, a leading web and app development service provider and will help you understand how this company can help you develop robust HIPAA compliant software. They have very vast experience and expertise in Android App Development and iOS App Development for HIPAA compliance.
Ensure Patient Data Security with HIPAA Compliant Software
Understanding HIPAA and its importance
HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and has strict rules and regulations that help healthcare entities to ensure health insurance portability and develop a strong base for protecting the confidentiality and security of individual health records were further justifications.
Let’s Know about these rules in detail to understand HIPAA better.
1. Privacy Rule: Privacy of data is a big responsibility and the first rule of HIPAA is established around this only. Under this rule, national standards for protecting identifiable health information also known as protect health information (PHI) of each individual is protected. As personal health information of patients is concerned, HIPAA has a rule under which only authorized persons are allowed to view, update and get an accounting disclosed dof PHI. all the healthcare entities and patients they acquire has to adhere to this rule in order to maintain privacy of sensitive information.
2. Security Rule: Confidentiality, integrity, and availability of PHI are three crucial components of medical data or any kind of data security. This regulation is established to develop and maintain national standards for safeguarding all three important components mentioned above to protect patient health information data. So under HIPAA compliance, it is now the responsibility of healthcare entities to provide proper physical, administrative and technical safeguard to the data. For this they can use encryption, access limits and other methodologies as well.
3. Breach Notification Rule: This rule is established to keep patients aware of data breach situations, under this rule, it is necessary for healthcare entities to notify affected individuals about the breach of unsecured PHI. In some cases, the media is also involved. In short, this rule has been developed to double sure about the transparency and accountability in the event of a data breach.
No doubt, after HIPAA compliance law, HIPAA compliant software have become a critical asset of every healthcare organization. The violation to HIPAA can lead to significant fines and penalties. Healthcare organizations and other covered entities can easily protect patient privacy, secure data and develop trust within the healthcare system by simply adhering to HIPAA regulations.
Consequences of not having a HIPAA Compliant software
Risk of huge fines and legal actions are the most immediate and tangible consequence that healthcare organizations have to face. The penalties between the range of $100 to $50, 000 can be imposed by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) for violating HIPAA. This penalty can go up to $1.5 million per year for each violation. The accumulation of these fines are very rapid especially in cases of willful neglect or ongoing non-compliance. In addition, affected individuals have full allowance to file lawsuits, leading to further financial strain and legal implications for healthcare organizations.
As data privacy is being increasingly valued in this era, thus healthcare organizations severely damage its reputation by being responsible for breaches of patient information. It can potentially erod patient trust in organization and can lead to patients getting driven to another organization that values their privacy and security. As the news of non-compliance or data breaches spreads quickly, it can also lead to loss of trust and can have long-lasting effects on patient retention and acquisition. This whole thing can impact the organization’s bottom line for years to come.
In addition to this, organizations failing to implement software for HIPAA compliance can face various operational disruptions, loss of business opportunities, increased security and audits and loss of patient trust for lifetime impacting overall business.
This is not it, there are chances where the non compliance with HIPAA implications can go beyond financial penalties. This can badly affect the practice and view of healthcare providers.
Conclusively saying, organizations failing to comply with HIPAA rules and regulations can fall into unethical issue rises and can generate significant risks for patients as well. Therefore, it is important for every healthcare provider to have HIPAA compliant software applications to protect patient information and build trust.
What is HIPAA compliant software and its key features
In simple words, the purpose of HIPAA compliance software provides a framework that helps healthcare entities in protecting patient healthcare data. The software based on HIPAA helps healthcare administrators to go through the nuances of HIPAA so that privacy and security of patient data is maintained. Healthcare entities having HIPAA compliance software develop good faith in patients and maintain complete documentation of the HIPAA compliance activities for future safety.
Unlike traditional electronic healthcare software used to maintain patient data, HIPAA compliant software is slightly different and advanced in nature. Let’s go through some of the useful features of HIPAA compliant software that makes it different and more secure.
1. Access control: Not everybody should have access to the software that contains sensitive patient data. This principle is rigorously followed by HIPAA and software developers who develop HIPAA compliant applications have to make sure that only a limited or necessary amount of data should be visible to the user. They have to assign a unique identifier to each user to control access to the data. In addition to this, the administrator of HIPAA compliant software should be able to track and oversee the actions performed by each individual on the system. The best example of this is that in HIPAA compliant software, only doctors have the right to read, write and update medical records of patients while the lab assistant is allowed to make updates to records only. This is how both the users have different access control as per the requirements.
2. Secure Data Transfers: Security while transferring data is one of the major concerns of HIPAA. Therefore it’s paramount to keep information safe and secure while transferring it from one system to another. There is a protocol under HIPAA under which organizations have to encrypt data using methods like TLS/SSL. With these methods, browsers will ask for certificates while connecting to the system. This is where HTTPS comes into play.The encrypted connection is established only after verifying the authenticity. Protocols like FTPS and SSH can also be used to transfer sensitive patient data through the system for more security.
3. User identity verification: After all the permissions are granted, the next step of security comes under HIPAA is user identification to make sure that the person asking for the data is actually the one who needs it.
User identification is done in various ways:
A. Using a password
B. Biometric data authentication
C. Personal identification number
D. Physical identification number
These are all some of the ways in which users can be identified rightly but as we all know passwords are vulnerable and can be stolen or guessed so it is important to combine and maintain strong passwords. A combination of multiple user verification processes can also be employed to keep the security bars high.
These features are important to ensure the security of PHI as well as to develop trust among auditors that you are taking necessary steps to protect sensitive patient data against breaches.
Step-by-step guide to develop HIPAA compliant software
Developing HIPAA compliant software requires a deep understanding of HIPAA rules and regulations. It is a complex process and requires the right approach and in depth risk assessment to understand the requirements of software better. You must follow a simple step by step process to understand the process of developing a robust HIPAA compliant software. These steps are as follows:
1. Evaluate risks based on the type of data
First and foremost thing to do while developing HIPAA compliant software is to understand data. Understanding the type of data that needs privacy and what are the potential risks against it is very crucial to get started with. Risk assessment is a very complex process but is very prominent to make sure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of ePHI is maintained. The risk assessment process should be conducted diligently as it forms the base of all security controls and safeguards that are going to be implemented to protect data.
2. Secure ePHI data on servers
The server whether it is on premises or cloud that organizations use to store ePHI data should also comply with HIPAA. Healthcare software development companies have to sign Business Associate Agreement with healthcare organizations to ensure this security of data. Server service providers such as Google, AWS and Microsoft Azure offer HIPAA compliant servers to store sensitive data. Data minimization is one the best security practices that generally HIPAA encourages. It helps to ensure that software development companies only collect and use data that is required to run the application.
3. Protect data breaches with encryption
The stage of risk assessment will help you understand whether the data you are dealing with needs encryption or not. Encryption is not mandatory under HIPAA security rule but it is one of the good practices to double sure the security of ePHI data. If the result of the risk assessment says that your data doesn’t need encryption then it’s completely the healthcare organization’s decision to implement it or not.
But one thing they have to make sure is if they implement any kind of encryption then it must be for both data-at-rest and moving data. Next thing that is essential for this process is to store decryption. It should be stored as per NIST standards in an entirely different location. You can also look at the options like Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to protect online data transfer and Transport Layer Security (TLS) to transfer data via HTTPS safely.
Develop Secure HIPAA Compliant Software Today
4. Backup data and implement disaster recovery
There are specific guidelines dedicated to data backup and recovery under the HIPAA Security Rule. Companies must develop and implement policies for the same. The policy should include clauses mentioning the time and location and process of PHI backup take place. The policy should also include the process of ePHI data retrieval and maintenance is its original form in case of any data breach incident happens.
5. Provide authorized access
It is very important for healthcare organizations and web development companies to implement an access management feature within HIPAA compliant software. It will help them to limit the access of PHI to the verified users only. They should also maintain activity logs to identify the unauthorized access attempts to the data.
6.User account authenticity
This process of authentication is implemented to ensure that only authorized users have the access to see ePHI in your environment. It prevents unauthorized users from gaining access to the data ensuring privacy and security. During the time of login into the system, the user authentication option asks fir the user identity who is trying to access the system for data.
User authentication can be done by using on or combination of two or more methods mentioned below:
1. Password-based authentication
2. Multi-factor authentication
3. Certificate-based authentication
4. Biometric authentication
5. Token-based authentication
How can GMTA help you in developing HIPAA compliant software?
HIPAA compliant software is an essential for healthcare organizations to maintain the privacy and security of protected health information. But developing an HIPAA-compliant software is a complex process because it has to go through multiple levels of authentication and verification to see if the development is done right. Therefore, partnering with the HIPAA compliant software vendors that have good experience and expertise for the same is crucial. GMTA is one of those leading on-demand software and app development companies that excels in developing HIPAA compliance applications following all the guidelines of this intricate process . Over the years they have developed a good trust in the healthcare industry by serving various organizations with top notch healthcare software complaints to HIPAA. With this vast experience and understanding the importance of law, GMTA makes sure that they develop softwares that provides high level security to patient data and maintain regulatory compliance.
GMTA’s follow a smart approach for developing HIPAA-compliant software. They begin with developing a thorough understanding of the specific needs and requirements of healthcare organizations. They also go through the challenges that healthcare entities are facing and why they require HIPAA compliant software to tackle those challenges. GMTA has a dedicated team of R&D that conducts comprehensive research and risk assessment of healthcare organizations to understand the potential vulnerabilities of the current system they are using for protected health information(PHI). They understand the importance of this assessment to pinpoint the areas which require robust security measures to protect ePHI.
GMTA has built various strengths by gaining experience for developing and implementing HIPAA compliant software but their main strength lies in the ability to check and implement required technical safeguards of HIPAA for maintaining privacy and security. This process mainly includes end-to-end encryption, secure user authentication methods, and stringent access controls. All this is done to make sure that only people with valid access can see sensitive data. They have brought a practice of incorporating regular security audits and vulnerability assessments of the software during the whole software development lifecycle. This helps them in getting surety about the software that it is secure against the emerging threats.
Their specialization in developing HIPAA compliant software doesn’t end here. Instead, they do a lot more than the other companies that are developing and implementing HIPAA compliant software. Over the years, they have also developed the capabilities to create health insurance applications as well that back HIPAA strongly. GMTA works on establishing administrative and physical safeguards along with the technical safeguards. Developing strong privacy policy and procedures, providing comprehensive training to employees about HIPAA companies and setting real-time incident plans to address data breaches are part of this process. The combination of these measures help to ensure that all the aspects of HIPAA rules and regulations are properly addressed and implemented.
In addition to the above strong base in HIPAA software app development, GMTA understands how crucial it is to seamlessly integrate HIPAA compliant software within the organization. For its correct usability, they always make sure that along with compliance, HIPAA compliant software comes with user friendly features that helps to enhance efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare procedures without affecting the security. In addition to this, we are proficient in developing android and ios apps for HIPAA compliant software.
Achieve HIPAA Compliance Effortlessly
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it is very clear that having HIPAA compliant software has become necessary for every healthcare entity to protect patient health information. This blog gave a detailed context of HIPAA complaint software, its features and other important aspects. Now it’s up to the healthcare organization, how they want to get their HIPAA compliant software developed.
Hence, getting an HIPAA compliant software developed correctly requires a good expertise in the technical aspects as well as understanding of HIPAA rules and regulations. If you are also looking to get your HIPAA compliant software developed, hiring GMTA as your HIPAA compliance software vendors can be the right choice. Healthcare organizations and other entities can trust GMTA’s and hire web developers for all kinds of requirements like Hire Android Developers, Hire iOS Developers and Hire Flutter Developers with complete faith. There vast experience and expertise in developing HIPAA compliant software will help healthcare organizations in implementing the software that is secure, reliable and compliant to HIPAA completely.
FAQs
1. Explain HIPAA and its importance for software development?
HIPAA is a law to protect patient health information. It was enacted by US federal law in 1996. In todays time, HIPAA has become very crucial for healthcare entities and it is very important for them to use HIPAA compliant softwares only to ensure PHI privacy, security, and trust.
2. List all the key components of HIPAA that software developers need to consider?
Key components of HIPAA set standards for protecting PHI, securing ePHI, and managing data breach and that software developers need to consider are Privacy Rule, Security Rule, and Breach Notification Rule, which
3. How can software developers ensure their software is HIPAA compliant?
Developers can implement encryption, access controls, regular audits, conducting risk assessments, and establishing strong privacy policies to ensure HIPAA compliance.
4. What can be the consequences healthcare organizations can face for not using HIPAA-compliant software?
The non-compliance of healthcare entities’ with HIPAA can lead to substantial fines, legal action, and loss of patient trust, leading to financial and reputational damage.
5. Explain the working of access control in HIPAA compliant software?
Access control in HIPAA compliant software is used to ensure that only authorized and verify personnel will get access to the sensitive patient data.
