The mass-handling of medical data: can the dangers ever be stopped?

There are masses of medical data stored on servers around the world and unfortunately hackers manage to find ways into these storage systems and gain access to this highly sensitive data.

This can be particularly relevant in the U.S., where their healthcare system means records are managed by a number of private organisations, or sourced to private entities whose responsibility is to manage medical records for several healthcare institutes. Although such ease of access can be beneficial from a medical perspective, the danger is the growing exposure of medical data to being hacked.

In America, private healthcare organisations and companies who are outsourced to handle medical data are regularly being hit with class action lawsuits after hackers have found their way into databases and servers.

Just last year, some of our own NHS Trusts suffered massively after the ‘WannaCry’ attack targeted less secure, out-of-date systems.

With the current shift toward handling sensitive medical data on servers that can be accessed via the internet, it’s clear that data is at risk to exposure. We have seen many actions and many cases where such data has been illegally accessed; unless something is done to properly secure data, we may never see the end to mass-medical data breaches, leaks and hacks.

In fact, given there is no absolutely foolproof way to fully protect data – by this, I mean data being 100% safe and secure – is it the case that nothing can be done?

Clearly, quick access to records and digital storing of data has innumerable benefits. So, how do we manage the trade-off between safe digital data and ability to access it? Can this problem even be resolved?

We’re not so sure it can…