Abstract
Health care organisations operate in a eld that is driven by patient, business
and legislative demands. Now, Information Technology (IT) is starting
to exert its powers on this eld.
A revolution is taking place in the health care eld, and IT is playing an
increasingly important role. This study originated from realising that medical
staff were using technology to help them receive patient studies and do
a diagnosis.
Health care professionals are very dependent on the availability of the computer
systems and on the accuracy of the data that is stored. While health
care records may contain information that is of utmost sensitivity, this information
is only useful if it is shared with the health care providers and the
system under which the patient receives his/her care.
The latter trend marks an ever-growing need to protect the confidentiality
and integrity of health care information, while at the same time ensuring its
availability to authorised health care providers. It has to be acknowledged
that a complete protection of data is, in practice, infeasible and impossible.
Many systems are not secure, making them vulnerable to attacks. Health
care facilities have a challenge of keeping up-to-date with the legal requirements
that apply to patient records in order to protect the condentiality,
integrity and availability of patient data.
This study is aimed at examining the information security of the data in a
teleradiology system that is used by a health care facility, and to provide
recommendations on how the security can be improved.
Prof. S.H. von Solms