Enhancing Clinical Performance and Improving Patient Safety Using Digital Health

Abstract

Patient confidentiality has remained a central issue in the current “big data” era of healthcare. Protections such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) exist to ensure that digital personal health information (PHI) are legally secure from threats and breaches that would threaten confidentiality. To be compliant with HIPAA regulations, steps must be taken by health care providers and digital health platforms, and these fall under the Privacy Rule, which outlines appropriate uses and disclosures of PHI, and the Security Rule, which lays out with granularity the steps that must be taken to adhere to the HIPAA regulations. Through deliberate design of secure digital health platforms, we can use technological advances in the collection, measurement, and delivery of health care to advance care and improve patient safety. Renewed efforts to optimize and standardize health care delivery has facilitated the implementation of electronic and digital health solutions that benefit medical and surgical training and efficiency while minimizing harm to patients. Cross-industry innovations such as the OR Black Box® will allow us to accomplish these lofty goals. Finally, we must strive to include patients in this digital health movement, as now more than ever we can create knowledge translation solutions that ensure that patients understand their health in a meaningful way.