Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 Mar 15;8(3):1560-80.
eCollection 2016.

Privacy and security in the era of digital health: what should translational researchers know and do about it?

Barbara L Filkins  1 , Ju Young Kim  2 , Bruce Roberts  3 , Winston Armstrong  4 , Mark A Miller  4 , Michael L Hultner  5 , Anthony P Castillo  6 , Jean-Christophe Ducom  7 , Eric J Topol  8 , Steven R Steinhubl  8
Affiliations

Privacy and security in the era of digital health: what should translational researchers know and do about it?

Barbara L Filkins et al. Am J Transl Res. .

Abstract

The rapid growth in the availability and incorporation of digital technologies in almost every aspect of our lives creates extraordinary opportunities but brings with it unique challenges. This is especially true for the translational researcher, whose work has been markedly enhanced through the capabilities of big data aggregation and analytics, wireless sensors, online study enrollment, mobile engagement, and much more. At the same time each of these tools brings distinctive security and privacy issues that most translational researchers are inadequately prepared to deal with despite accepting overall responsibility for them. For the researcher, the solution for addressing these challenges is both simple and complex. Cyber-situational awareness is no longer a luxury-it is fundamental in combating both the elite and highly organized adversaries on the Internet as well as taking proactive steps to avoid a careless turn down the wrong digital dark alley. The researcher, now responsible for elements that may/may not be beyond his or her direct control, needs an additional level of cyber literacy to understand the responsibilities imposed on them as data owner. Responsibility lies with knowing what you can do about the things you can control and those you can't. The objective of this paper is to describe the data privacy and security concerns that translational researchers need to be aware of, and discuss the tools and techniques available to them to help minimize that risk.

Keywords: Digital health; confidentiality; cyber security; privacy; translational research.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Evolution of clinical technology.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The connected world of translational research in medicine.
Figure 3
Figure 3
SSL connection, secure and insecure.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The security risk landscape for today’s connected environment.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Rouse M. SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) definition. TechTarget. 2014
    1. Snell E, editor. Hacking Still Leading Cause of 2015 Health Data Breaches. http://healthitsecurity.com/2015.
    1. Kaâniche M, Deswarte Y, Alata E, Dacier M, Nicomette V. Empirical analysis and statistical modeling of attack processes based on honeypots. IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN-2006), Workshop on Empirical Evaluation of Dependability and Security (WEEDS) 2006:119–124.
    1. Healthcare is a Growing Target for Cybercrime, and It’s Only Going to Get Worse. United States Cybersecurity Magazine. 2014;1:56.
    1. Goodman M. Future Crimes. New York: Doubleday; 2015.

LinkOut - more resources