Up to 80 million patient records lost, stolen and leaked since 2010

Patient information privacy has been a growing concern since a 2009 legal change which pushed medical records into electronic filing systems.

However, although the information is protected by law, new analysis has shown that it is increasingly falling into the wrong hands as the medical community continues to struggle with the transition from paper to electronic records.

In 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act was passed into law. This act was intended to push more medical care providers to switch to digital, whilst also introducing harsher penalties for data breaches to protect patient privacy.

This latest study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that security issues remain, with 344 breaches of patient information over the course of 2017 alone.

Dr Thomas McCoy Jr, co-author of the study, said “A Long-standing tenet of medical care is that confidentiality is expected, and breaches are a failure to uphold that expectation.

“Big data has the ability lead to opportunities for transformational health discoveries, but it also presents an opportunity to have these big data breaches.

“My attention would be on preventing hacking and IT incidents.”

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Posted by Tony May, Partner/head of Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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