A thousand things equate to the day-to-day obligations of occupational health professionals, but a very important one is medical data security. In healthcare, data security is the continuous practice of protecting patients’ information from unauthorized access, corruption, or theft throughout its entire lifecycle, whilst complying with regulatory bodies to ensure maximum security.
Think about how reluctant you get about revealing your deepest secrets to someone, anyone at all. Now that’s exactly what runs through the mind of an employee who needs to go through a round of health assessments and is concerned about having their medical record slipping into the wrong hands.
How bad can it get when you lose your client’s health information as an OHSP?
Can you get sued for such? Yes. If the misuse of their data resulted in harm to them, then your client may file a lawsuit to seek compensation.
The loss of clients’ health information through a data breach or file mismanagement can compromise the core value of confidentiality as widely practised in the healthcare system. Following this, Occupational Health Service Providers (OHSPs) may experience problems with their brand’s reputation and a decline in client trust and loyalty. Even worse, lawsuits or hefty fines from regulators.
How To Protect Your Clients’ Health Information
According to SecureWorld, OHSPs can secure health information in four effective ways:
- Data Encryption: Protect your client’s health information by converting its content into encrypted codes that cannot be decrypted by unauthorised personnel without an access key.
- Data Masking: Similar to data encryption, data masking locks some parts of the data from unauthorized personnel.
- Data Erasure: This method is useful for parts of data that are no longer relevant. Such data is then deleted by an external entity and cannot be recovered.
- Data Backup: As its name implies, duplicating health records and reserving the copy in a safe place in case the original version is lost.
Takeaway
The primary responsibility of an OHSP is to carry out various activities aimed at protecting and promoting the safety, health and well-being of workers. Providing (re)assurance to stakeholders regarding data security is a plus all OHSPs should work to achieve.
Your occupational health service delivery can improve with Seamfix Care, a comprehensive OHSP solution that combines the ability to properly secure your clients’ health information on a blockchain-powered cloud storage that only authorized personnel can access.
In addition to being a reliable solution for data security, occupational health services can be done faster with automated processes such as creating and sending digital questionnaires and issuing verifiable digital health certificates.
Ready to ensure data compliance and health surveillance? Use Seamfix Care.
