Omogah, F. O. (2020). Information Security and Privacy Framework in Electronic Healthcare Systems. Health Systems and Policy Research, 7(4)

Abstract

Presently studies have shown that cyber security incidences are on the rise. Electronic Healthcare systems (EHCS) is now a focus in most of Kenyan level five healthcare facilities for enhancing efficiency and effectiveness in handling patients’ information which is personal and confidential and must be guarded. The EHCS runs crucial patient’s information used for improving healthcare service delivery when capturing admissions, history tacking, and diagnosis, treatment, and disease prevention. EHCS is perceived to suffer serious blows from human/machine conflict, posing security and privacy challenges with devastating impact on patients’ medical information and this put many lives at greater clinical risks. With ever growing critical and timely healthcare needs and demands for treatment procedures, additional related industries come into play in the name of health care services sub-contractors. With this phenomenon there has emerged increased concerns and numerous complains touching on Security and Privacy of patients’ information at the main healthcare facilities and more so at the allied sub-contractors. The speculated concerns are querying the rampant inappropriate disseminations of patients’ critical information and the manner in which this information flow back and forth between main facilities and related industries. This study will assess current Security and Privacy frameworks for protection of electronic health information, evaluate the EHCS at the main health care facilities and at the sub contraction levels, carry out evaluation of safety frameworks and develop appropriate security frameworks that would guarantee security and privacy for patients’ information. This study will adopt a descriptive cross-sectional study that seeks to identify security challenges to patients’ electronic medical information.