Telehealth Risk Management

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has increased the demand for data and accelerated the use of telehealth. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) defines telehealth as the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support and promote long-distance clinical health care, patient and professional health-related education, and public health and health administration. Technologies include videoconferencing, the internet, store and-forward imaging, streaming media, and landline and wireless communications.

This paper focuses on having the processes and controls in place necessary to ensure the privacy and security of telehealth patient information in the cloud with respect to the HIPAA privacy rule and the GDPR. Maintaining the sanctity and integrity of healthcare data is of paramount importance not just from a regulatory perspective but also from a patient safety point of view. In this paper, we have presented privacy and security issues in each phase of the data lifecycle and discussed methods to mitigate privacy and security concerns.