Essay Example: Empowering Citizens with Health Care for Economic Growth

Introduction

A government is always tasked with the problem of ensuring that its citizens are equipped with the necessary tools and equipment that they would enable the state to be productive. Therefore, the implementation of adequate health care is crucial in nations which desire for improved economy and productivity of its citizens. Since the commencement of time, humanity has been endlessly searching for better ways to improve the quality of life. The transition from the traditional methods to a scientific approach made a huge impact on the quality of life. Moreover, since the inception of the Hippocratic Oath, which acts as a guide for professionals in the Medical industry, provide patient care, including ensuring that their information is kept safe from unauthorized eyes. So far, the Hippocratic Oath has instilled a culture of integrity and honesty among the professionals and their patients. Still, as the world advances in technology, risks concerning confidentiality and privacy to patients and patient records are increasing (Conaty-Buck, 2017). As health institutions embrace the digital migration, analog forms of storing data are being done away with, and computerized systems are coming in to store, retrieve, edit, and transfer medical records. This paper will cover mainly on electronic health records and cybersecurity in the current and future health practices. Also, the paper will cover the ethical issues in the informatics health care, plan for implementing change, changes in public policy, and wraps up with a conclusion.

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Health Practices and Electronic Health Records and Cyber Security

As stated earlier, productive nations are identified through the health of its people. When people are healthy, then it means that the health facilities in the country are good and effective. The health industry sits in the service sector, where the quality of services offered to patients is essential.

Quality patient care results in a healthy nation or rather healthy individuals, Consequently, patient records should constantly be handled with a lot of care as they contain treatment details of individual patients, and these could be used in the wrong way when in the wrong hands. Consider a scenario where a patient’s medical history is stolen, and kidnappers or terrorists use the information to attack specific individuals whose data is exposed. The target patients would be vulnerable and hence ensuring that patient records are stored and secure. Before the digital migration, patient records used to be in files, a tangible form, where these files would be kept in a file holder and stored in cabinets that are stored in storage rooms.

In case of danger such as fires and natural disasters, these records were susceptible to being lost or damaged. However, with digitality, the storage of patient records was revolutionized, and records were stored in digital forms in the cloud. Electronic health record systems improve the efficiency and effectiveness of handling records for patients (Jarrett, 2017). With electronic health records, the inconvenience of the bulkiness of the medical files is removed as well as the errors arising from handwriting was also solved.

However, with the electronic method of storing and accessing medical data, came the problem of cyber breaches where hackers and other unauthorized persons often breached the systems for storing medical data. Malicious people with the means can access confidential data when they deem fit. With increasing digitality in the health sector, electronic health records continue becoming vulnerable to cyber-attacks, and hence something needs to be done to deter such actions.

Healthcare informatics is concerned with improving healthcare, albeit integrating information and technology, communications, and health care. Due to the paradigm shift from analog to digitality in the medicine, taking proactive measures in ensuring that quality of life and patient care is upheld is of utmost significance. Through healthcare informatics, quality patient care is achieved. Through informatics, patients would be able to provide crucial information to their clinicians through communications channels (Conaty-Buck, 2017). Moreover, through health informatics, clinicians would be able to share medical records with other clinicians when its necessary in an attempt to improve healthcare in general, either to a specific individual or a group of persons with similar problems. In general, health informatics is aimed at improving patient-centered care, which gained traction since the publication of the report Crossing the Quality Chasms by the Institutes of Medicine (Bouazzaoui & Daniels, 2020).

Adequate security needs to be in place (cybersecurity), which incorporates using biometrics, or employing security personnel to guard servers, restricting access to servers, using the latest versions of antiviruses, etc. to ensure that medical data is properly stored. The role of healthcare informatics closely resembles the goal of efficient electronic health records and cybersecurity as they all achieve quality healthcare (Bouazzaoui & Daniels, 2020). Currently and possibly in the future, the health sector is likely to improve in terms of technology where robotic arms and nanotechnology would be prevalent. When this is achieved and normalized, it would be crucial for healthcare informatics to be effective in ensuring that there are proper coordination and integration as well as efficiency in electronic health records systems.

In summary, electronic health record and cybersecurity is very crucial in health practices both in the future and present since it improves the efficiency and effectiveness in handling patients in informatics healthcare. Also based on the early scholar’s research, I conclude that electronic health record increase patients safety since it enhances aggregation, communication, and analysis of patient data; hence it makes easier to keenly consider all aspects of the patient’s health condition. Most scholars have argued that the successful implementation of efficient and effective electronic health records and cybersecurity in informatics health care with enhancing confidentiality between patient and doctor, and all the privacy information of a patient is protected. Electronic health record and cybersecurity is crucial to health informatics because it allows for the storage, retrieval, integration, and transfer of medical records from patients to clinicians, clinicians to clinicians or even between healthcare institutions. Privacy and confidentiality remain crucial in medicine, where patient-doctor confidentiality needs to be upheld at all costs (Keshta & Odeh, 2020). With the digital migration, electronic medical records could easily be exposed when they are transferred or when stored in the servers.

Research on Electronic Health Records and Cybersecurity

According to the article printed in the AMA Journal of ethics, Lucivero (2017), assert that privacy, confidentiality, and security to electronic health records is a crucial and most important aspect in the field of medicine. The article discussed that the physician, practice, or organizations are owners of the physical medical records. Still, the patients are owners of the specific information as it directly concerns them (Lucivero, 2017). Similarly, Kruse et al., (2017), in a publication postulate that privacy of patients and the security of their medical information is the most crucial component of a healthcare organization should consider when determining the adoption of electronic health records. Based on the several legal regulations on privacy, confidentiality, and security of patient records, appropriate techniques to the security of electronic health record systems should be implemented to ensure that electronic medical data is properly stored, secure from unauthorized access. Kruse et al., (2017), in their study, suggest that frequent security measures that are used are categorized into three themes of administrative, physical, and technical safeguards. Additionally, due to the nature and sensitivity of the electronic health records, there needs to be advanced measures to security and protection of the medical data.

Other studies have confirmed that cybersecurity remains the serious problem of the 21st century, where risks to economic and national security arise due to cybercrimes. In most cases, cybersecurity is compared to weapons of mass destruction, as faulting of systems could be devastating to a fully automated country. Consider a scenario where the national power grid is hacked by malicious people of the traffic lights systems have been breached. The damage that would arise from such events would be catastrophic. Similarly, in health care systems, a breach to the database or even the electronic data servers would put the hospital and the patients whose data is exposed to grave danger. As a result, it is crucial to ensure that there are adequate and appropriate security measures in place to prevent such cataclysmic events.

Ethical Issues in Electronic Health Records and Cybersecurity

Before digitality, medical records were on paper, and the information in the medical records was used in research, clinical, administrative, and financial purposes. However, the main disadvantage of this method and technique was lack of accessibility, and access to data was restricted to one person at a time. Completion time was delayed because updates were made manually. With the implementation of electronics health records, there has been an adequate improvement in patient care as electronic health records systems have an advantage over the paper records system (Weber et al., 2018). With electronic health record systems, the problem of wrong prescriptions is overcome as, in most cases, the electronic health records and cybersecurity systems are connected to drug banks and pharmacies. Such is achieved when there is the prohibition in permitting prescription and ordering of drugs that have a known detrimental effect on certain patients.

Moreover, electronic health record systems offer users the ability to access databases and servers at the same time and from anywhere. This is beneficial because the time factor is eliminated. Clinicians, nurses, etc. would not have to wait six months to gain access to medical data. On the contrary, there are several ethical and legal issues surrounding electronic health records. These issues revolve around privacy and confidentiality, security breaches, and integrity, and availability. Individuals like having the right to share information at their own will and time.

Coercing someone into giving up information is wrong, and so does disclose information about a person without their consent. Medical data is often used by clinicians, researchers, and other professionals in the field of medicine. During this transfer of data, privacy and confidentiality should be upheld where appropriate security is implemented to ensure its protection (Hammack-Aviran et al., 2020). Patient data comprises information on the individual’s biodata to their medical history, and such information should only be disclosed to others when the patient has consented. In instances where the patient is too young to have consent, then their guardian or parents would be asked to give consent on their behalf.

Medical data that forms the basis of patient data that should be protected is characterized by having specific information about an individual and data such as the number of people having breast cancer or who have type I diabetes cannot fall under this category due to lack of specificity.

Healthcare institutions, health insurance companies, and other persons who need to gain access to medical data woul...