In April this year, patients were evacuated from the emergency department of a Gauteng hospital after a fire broke out. Days later, there was a second fire at the same hospital – this time in the outpatient department. Earlier this month, news outlets reported that both fires started in document storage rooms, with stacks of paper and files burning or being destroyed in the firefighting effort.
While the documents in question were reportedly business-related archives, the incident nevertheless highlighted an important issue around information storage: paper-based records can go up in smoke.
Importance of health information
“Your health information is the most sensitive information about you – it informs your decisions, your behaviours, and is a leading indicator of risk within your life,” says Allan Macfarlane, Chief Technology Officer at Ajuda, a secure digital vault for health records. “As an individual, it is important that you are the custodian of your own information and only individuals that you choose are empowered to act on this data.”
Losing your medical information is more than just inconvenient – it can be dangerous. Without a detailed medical history, healthcare providers may not be able to treat you as effectively should you get sick or injured. Information such as your blood type, allergies and underlying chronic conditions is critical for you to receive the best possible care.
Yet, storage of health information remains largely paper-based. Whether it’s a filing cabinet in a GP’s office or a box of papers in your garage that you intend to organise “one day when you have a gap”, health information that exists only in physical form is at risk. “Physical storage has almost no access control, granular sensitivity control mechanisms, is prone to getting lost or damaged, and files are never where you think you left them,” says Macfarlane.
Secure digital storage for health records
There’s a false sense of security that comes with having your medical records where you can see them. One fire, burglary, chaotic move, or even a teething puppy, and an important document could be destroyed forever. “A real-world example is photos of my knee before and after surgery as a reference point for myself and any clinical professional I interact with in the future,” notes Macfarlane. “Those photos are time-sensitive records that cannot be recreated at some point in the future.”
He believes all health information should be digitised and centrally stored. The benefits are numerous:
Security: “Secure digital storage is far safer than physical storage,” says Macfarlane. “Your data and access to it are managed as a commercial entity and with far better levels of protection and oversight than if it were stored in your linen cupboard.”
Privacy: “With a digital solution, you can control who can access what, at what time and in what level of detail. Your files are always in a trusted central repository, backed up and managed by a professional team who enable you to share your data with people and organisations that you choose.”
Affordability: “Given the inherent challenges with physical record keeping and the fact that you can securely store your records digitally for free or at very low cost, it makes sense to use these facilities,” says Macfarlane.
Tips for Storing Your Digital Information Securely
Keeping your information secure isn’t just about going digital – your choice of digital storage mechanism makes a difference. Macfarlane provides some useful tips:
1/ Don’t rely on your laptop.
“Your laptop is just another piece of physical storage that is prone to the same problems that traditional record keeping is,” says Macfarlane. “A laptop is a single point of failure that renders you without any records should it be stolen, break or get corrupted by some means.”
2/ Use a secure cloud-based storage facility.
Make sure your information is not only safe from physical threats, such as fire and theft, but also cyber theft. As a built-for-purpose digital vault, created especially for storing medical information, Ajuda has implemented industry-leading technology architectures and processes that verify that you are who you claim to be, says Macfarlane. “Security certificates add another level of security that ensures that all communication between you as the end user and our server infrastructure is secure and that nobody is able to intercept your information.”
3/ Always choose a platform that uses multi-factor authentication (MFA).
“There are three ways that we look to protect data today; something you have, something you know and something you are,” says Macfarlane. “‘Something that you have’ might be a password, ‘something you know’ might be a one-time pin or some kind of two-factor authentication and ‘something you are’ might be your fingerprint. Wherever possible, choose tools and services that implement their security using something you are as the best, something you know next and something you have last.”
Ajuda uses a combination of factors for secure access control. “Our processes are premised on the two principles, ‘something you have’ and ‘something that you know’. The unique combination of a claimed identity together with two factor authentication ensures that only correctly authorised individuals are allowed access to your medical information,” says Macfarlane.
You can’t control the unexpected, but you can control your information. Protect your health information like your life depends on it – because sometimes, it does.