Hospital management software is a significant investment for any healthcare institution. When you invest in this type of software, your data becomes an asset that needs to be protected.
To help hospitals protect their sensitive patient data, we have compiled several tips and tricks on how the vendors can provide better access control and password protection to keep your data safe at all times.
1. Password protection:
Password security is a key component for protecting your sensitive data. The vendors should offer password policies that are at least 16 characters in length, with letters and numbers mixed together.
This will make it difficult or impossible to guess the passwords and keep hackers from accessing patient records through third-party applications.
2. Password Rotation Policy:
The vendor should provide a policy that enables you to change your password every 90 days or so. This will make it difficult for hackers to use the same passwords over and repeat, as they would need access through a third-party application in order to do so (which is restricted) or by brute force attacks which becomes less likely with the increased complexity of lengthy 16 characters long alphanumeric passwords.
3. First time, Next login change password:
This allows the user to change their password the first time they are logged in, instead of changing it during a later session. This can provide an extra layer for protection as hackers will not be able to use old passwords that you have changed your credentials on other login sessions with this policy enabled.
4. Password encryption policy:
This allows the passwords to be encrypted, which means that the passwords are not stored in clear text in the database. They are translated into a secret code which ensures that hackers cannot read your credentials off any server they have.
5. Restricted access points:
This enables the user to restrict where or with which devices employees can log into the hospital management system, and who all can access data.
The HMS the vendor provides should have such features to ensure that only authorized users have an unrestricted view into sensitive personally identifiable healthcare-related data.
If they do not, you may run a higher risk of unauthorized access to sensitive information such as their case medical records and other personal identifiable healthcare-related communication.
Terminating the access of ex-employees on time is also very important to maintain the safety of your data. This will restrict them from accessing patient information, thus avoiding a potential breach of confidentiality and security policies.
6. Audit Control capabilities:
This helps for reviewing leakage and ensuring logging of all transactions in the application improving transparency to all stakeholders like Government, Employees, Management etc.
7. Provide a strong anti-virus:
Malicious malware or virus can damage your software and data. The software provider can provide features that enable timely notifications and reminders.
The anti-virus should be able to detect, scan the computer for any malicious code on it as well as provide a detailed analysis of what each file contains in terms of potential risks associated with that particular program which is really effective at preventing infections from spreading throughout networks.
8. Good data backup policy:
The vendors can help in protecting and securing valuable data with a good backup policy. Even if something unfortunate happens, a good data backup policy can save you from data loss and in business continuity.
All hospitals are required to keep their data safe and secure, but when you have sensitive healthcare data on your hospital management software it becomes even more important. There are many policies that vendors should offer in order to keep the patient's personal information safe, as the ones discussed above, these services can help make sure that your patients' most private information is well-protected from those who would do them harm.
Insta by Practo follows the best industrial practices for the protection of sensitive healthcare data on their HMS solutions.
Learn more, book a free demo.
