The healthcare industry will undergo significant changes in the coming months and years ahead. The transition to Electronic Medical Records offers tremendous cost efficiencies, reduction in serious errors and protection of confidential data. Despite all of the advantages over paper based systems, EMR applications still have several areas where sensitive data can be exposed to unauthorized sources.
The majority of EMR applications use Microsoft Internet Explorer as their primary user interface. Displaying medical records within the browser without a way to prevent screen capture represents a significant security risk. An easy way to address this is to add a digital rights management application to the system to prevent capturing a patient’s record. Seoul National University Hospital eliminated their threat by adding a Secure Web appliance to their EMR application. When secure patient information is displayed all screen capture capabilities are disabled preventing any unauthorized capture of data. Easy fix and it saves a lot of problems.