Digital health: Cybersecurity is a value creation lever, not only a source of expenditure

Publication date: Available online 18 September 2019Source: Health Policy and TechnologyAuthor(s): Hassane Alami, Marie-Pierre Gagnon, Mohamed Ali Ag Ahmed, Jean-Paul FortinAbstractDigital technologies have become an essential lever for developing patient-centered services and outcomes while ensuring financial sustainability in healthcare organizations and systems. They contribute to provide high quality, coordinated, and continuing care; to improve practices and support strategies for the management and monitoring of the population health; and to build collective responsibility for healthcare stakeholders to contain costs. However, digital technologies involve significant changes, sometimes breaking with what constitutes known commodities in healthcare organizations and systems (e.g., data governance, inter-operability, security and safety, literacy and training). The recent cyberattacks that have affected and disrupted many healthcare organizations and systems around the world are one of the illustrations. These events show that the issue of cybersecurity should not continue to be considered as a mere source of expenditure but as a source of value creation.
Source: Health Policy and Technology - Category: Health Management Source Type: research