The special Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (or simply HIPAA) aims to completely safeguard all the personal data of healthcare professionals and their patients from dangerous unauthorized access. It’s also ensuring the continuity of medical insurance coverage despite any changes in residency. Today, modern HIPAA compliant software development is the primary goal of all software developers working in the medical field. Compliance with these requirements is a mandatory criterion for every released application. Why does this matter?
What Exactly is HIPAA?
HIPAA was enacted on a legislative level on August 21, 1996, in the USA. This act defines the following provisions:
- Preservation of medical insurance for persons who have changed or temporarily lost their jobs;
- Regulation of electronic transactions worldwide to ensure fast completely secure and safe access to different patients personal data;
- Preservation of data confidentiality with access granted only to some people authorized by law to do so;
- Regulation of healthcare system expenditures.
From a software product development perspective, HIPAA establishes strict main standards and special rules to protect personal medical data and necessary information fully. HIPAA helps to ensure relevant parties like health insurance companies do have access to medical records, though restricts the exact details shared only to required information. It is necessary to prevent data breaches and unauthorized editing of patient digital records by some third parties.
How is the Special HIPAA Standard Applied to Software Products?
To fully comply with established standards, every computer or mobile application must:
Restricting access to edit patient data and personal information to individuals other than those authorized by the patient.
- ensuring full data encryption using modern technologies and protocols;
- having a robust security system to prevent unauthorized access to the entire system’s database;
- ensuring compliance with complete secure data transmission protocols;
- supporting modern, reliable authentication systems for both patients and their healthcare providers.
Why is this so important? Firstly, altering patient data can lead to incorrect diagnoses and improperly prescribed treatment. Additionally, the patient may encounter difficulties in seeking medical care and with their medical insurance. Secondly, this is the only way to avoid financial losses associated with fraudulent activities. Lastly, failure to comply with the main requirements established by HIPAA can easily result in serious sanctions imposed on the developer.
Penalties for Any Non-compliance with the Standards Established by HIPAA
Developers may face significant fines for non-compliance with all requirements established by the current relevant law. The complete amount is determined based on the seriousness of the violation. The range of it can be from $100 to $50,000 per violation, reaching more than $1.5 million per year.
In particularly severe cases, with a negligent attitude towards the law, developer companies may face more serious sanctions, namely:
- Criminal liability leading to imprisonment.
- exclusion from government healthcare programs;
- Filing civil lawsuits for very large sums (in cases where the software product is operational and a data breach has occurred).
Deliberately allowing errors and neglecting legal norms does not make sense. However, there is always a risk of encountering an unscrupulous developer. Therefore, it is advisable to entrust the ordering and release of software products only to large, reputable companies that genuinely care about their reputation.
