There has been a great deal of coverage in the past few years centering on the skyrocketing costs of health care. Due to this coverage, and the tension it provides, some positive healthcare advances have been missed — such as Health 2.0, for example. Health 2.0 is a technological revolution in the healthcare industry; it includes concepts such as tele-medicine, electronic medical records, mobile health applications and more.
Health 2.0 improves on two concerns within the healthcare industry — information security and environmentally friendly methods. Healthcare records contain a lot of personal information that health care providers and providers must keep secure and confidential under HIPAA compliance. Title II of HIPAA compliance requires the establishment of security standards for electronic health care transactions, such as electronic medical record keeping, and national identifiers for providers, health insurance plans, and employers. Through text message security, email encryption and other electronic security measures, secure messaging between patients and providers are established. For example, with text message security, a patient can receive a notification from mobile medical apps that their prescription is due for a refill.
Health 2.0 is also improving the use of environmentally friendly measures among the healthcare industry. Currently, about 46% of U.S. medical practitioners use electronic record keeping software. Health 2.0 allows the the electronic keeping of medical software, which can significantly reduce the thousands of paper documents present in medical offices. Electronically hosting medical records is also a more secure, and efficient way to store patient information, reducing the chances of papers being lost, and the time it takes to sift through hundreds of files to find the information you’re looking for.
Each healthcare provider may arrive at different conclusions given the threat posed by electronically sending information, and in order for these electronic systems to work, they must evaluate their mobile HIPAA compliance policy accordingly. However, according to a recent study published by the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, Danish doctors reported, as early as the late 1990’s, that they were saving an average of 30 minutes per day by prescribing drugs and ordering lab reports electronically. Perhaps our American healthcare system can take a page out of the Danish doctor’s book, and improve their methods of storing and sending medical information.