During last week's Health IT Standards Committee meeting, experts spoke about the dangers of instituting insufficient health data protections, NextGov reports.
Chad Skidmore, director of network services for Inland Northwest Health Services in Washington state, said international hackers could break into health data systems and manipulate patient records, causing potentially fatal consequences.
Skidmore said health care facilities might be particularly vulnerable to such cyber attacks because they typically invest less in information security than other industries.
Ryan Smith -- assistant vice president of the eBusiness arm of Utah's Intermountain Health Care -- added that health care organizations could face additional security risks if they use cloud computing systems to store EHRs remotely over the Internet (Brewin, NextGov, 11/20).
Federal Obstacles to Increased Data Sharing
During the Standards Committee meeting, Stephen Warren, deputy CIO for the Department of Veterans Affairs, noted that federal data security rules might hinder national health information sharing initiatives.
Currently, the Federal Information Security and Management Act and the National Institute for Standards and Technology regulations require federal agencies to implement strong security protections and monitor their network traffic. The rules also require federal agencies to boost data protections when connecting with non-governmental systems.
Federal officials say these requirements might make it more difficult for the government to expand its Nationwide Health Information Network.
Warren said the federal government should consider scaling up its data networks and investigating how security systems affect work patterns (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 11/20).