Information security in the health care industry has almost always been viewed as an impediment to productivity. Can we survive without it in an industry where productivity has a direct correlation to human life? Or do we accept it as a cost of doing business? As the lines of distinction between financial, reputational, and health information disappear, and the meaning of “privacy” is ever changing, how can balance be achieved by a “traditionalistic” industry plagued by issues of a “modern” world to provide the service that is at its paramount “human.” Students of today, leaders in the making who will have to answer this question, are not taught about these tensions and workable solutions (when they exist). But the tensions exist, and the problem is getting worse.
A panel of experts in cyber security, medical financial operations, medical privacy law, and developing medical software—including a practicing medical doctor—discuss information security from their viewpoint and react to their fellow panelists' sometimes conflicting views of information security. They also look into their own crystal balls to see what challenges the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, along with miniaturization and advances in electronic systems, will provide in the years ahead.