Strengthening Legal Compliance for Privacy in Electronic Health Information Systems: A Review and Analysis

Vicky Liu is an Associate Lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Her Master dissertation is entitled “Visually Sealed and Digitally Signed Electronic Documents: Building on Asian Tradition”. She is currently enrolled in a PhD focusing on the development of an architecture for a viable and sustainable enforcement of security and privacy in Australian health information systems.

Lauren May
Information Security Institute, Faculty of Information Technology Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Australia

Dr. Lauren May is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology and a researcher with the Information Security Institute at Queensland University of Technology. Her PhD and Research Masters degrees are in cryptography, whilst her Bachelor degree is in Applied Science Mathematics. She is currently completing a Masters of Learning Innovation. Her research interests are information security, its management and its impacts on society, and adult learning. Lauren and her research students have interests in topics such as information security management in universities, health, not-for-profit organisations, risk analysis, e-government, biometrics, governance, e-discovery, cryptology, socio-technical systems. network security and adult learning in the contemporary tertiary sector. Lauren’s teaching areas are information security fundamentals, introductory cryptology and socio-technical systems. As well as higher degree (PhD, Masters Research) student supervision, she also supervises many project students.

William Caelli
Information Security Institute, Faculty of Information Technology Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Australia

Professor William Caelli has over 45 years experience in the information technology industry, this experience has involved the actual development of complete computer systems in industry including the ERACOM ERA-50, 60, 80 series as well as the integration of cryptographic sub-systems into these structures. He co-leads the cyber law and policy research group in the Information Security Institute (ISI) at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), a research centre of which he was the Founding Director in 1988. He is a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society and the Institute for Combinatorics as well as being a Senior Member of the IEEE. In 2002 he was presented with the Kristian Beckman Award by Technical Committee 11 of IFIP for his international work in information security and received the Pearcey Medal in September 2002 for his lifelong work in the IT industry. Computerworld Australia has nominated him as a “Computer Pioneer”. In September 2003 he was made an Honorary CISM by ISACA, the international information security association. He was made an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO) in the January 2003 Australia Day honours list. Professor Caelli becomes World’s First Recipient of (ISC)2 Fellowship in 2007.

Peter Croll
Information Security Institute, Faculty of Information Technology Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Australia

Peter Croll is a Professor of Software Engineering in the Faculty of Information Technology at QUT, Brisbane. He has recently completed a fellowship with government’s research body, CSIRO in support of their National Flagship on Preventative Health to investigate the privacy and security risks associated with electronic health data integration. At QUT, he directs the e-health research group focusing on risk and trust management of health information systems. His previous roles have included the directorships of an ICT research institute and an IT research centre, Head of School of IT and Computer Science and an academy director. He is currently a Fellow of both the Australian and the British Computer Societies, a Chartered Engineer, a Chartered IT Professional, a Board Director of the Health Informatics Society of Australia (HISA) Ltd. and a research leader for the QSHI consortium which focuses on Telehealth for Agedcare. He chairs the national forums HIPS and ehPASS which focus on Health Informatics Privacy and Security.

Strengthening Legal Compliance for Privacy in Electronic Health Information Systems: A Review and Analysis

Vicky Liu, Lauren May, William Caelli, Peter Croll

Abstract

It is well recognised that adoption of information communication and technology (ICT) in healthcare can transform healthcare services. Numerous countries are seeking to establish national ehealth development and implementation. To collect, store and process individual health information in an electronic system, healthcare providers need to comply with the appropriate security and privacy legislation. Deploying ICT systems in healthcare operations can provide advantages in healthcare delivery; however, risks to privacy in such e-health systems must be addressed. Adopting appropriate security technologies can simplify some of the complexity associated with privacy concerns. Evaluation criteria can be useful in providing a benchmark for users to assess the degree of confidence they can place in health information systems for the storage and processing of sensitive health information. This paper also provides an overview of the “Common Criteria (CC)” for the assessment of IT products and systems and relates privacy requirements to the relevant CC Protection Profiles. We recommend a certain level of security in healthcare related information systems. Healthcare providers need to deploy strong security platforms to ensure the protection of electronic health information from both internal and external threats including the provision of conformance in health information systems to regulatory and legal requirements.

Keywords

Security; Health Information Systems; E-health; Privacy; Confidentiality; Electronic Health Records; Australian Privacy Legislation; HIPAA implications

Full Text: PDF

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

--- eJHI - electronic Journal of Health Informatics - ISSN 1446-4381 ---

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