HIPAA compliance will help AI solutions take treatment methods to the next level.
FREMONT, CA: With the growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions in the healthcare industry, quality of care has improved drastically. The future of AI in healthcare is bright, indeed, but care providers must ensure that the AI solutions that their organization is using are HIPAA-compliant. HIPAA compliance is continually evolving. The healthcare industry is heavily regulated. AI solution developers or vendors exploring the opportunities in the healthcare industry should step in with eyes wide open. To avoid negative impacts, AI developers need to understand the activities that may trigger HIPAA obligations and structure their actions accordingly. This will help them develop efficient healthcare solutions that are compliant with regulations.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is an enforcement agency for HIPAA, has published guidance relating to the HIPAA implications for developers of healthcare solutions. This OCR guidance is instructive for numerous day-to-day AI situations. There are already platforms that use AI to help care providers more effectively store, categorize, and protect electronic health information. Such tools are the starting point of AI in the health space. Moving forward, these systems will only grow more complex and more sophisticated. This means they may commit accidental HIPAA violations. And as healthcare AIs grow more complex, it will become increasingly important for them to fall under the HIPAA umbrella.
Patient care is more than outcomes, and there is a morality to it, which cannot be protected if physicians don’t know how their tools work. To tackle these, care providers must implement AI following compliance. As HIPAA requires safe access management, care providers should make sure that patient data access is only granted to those that need it as part of their job role. Also, it is recommended to encrypt data that is sent externally. HIPAA law is continuously changing, and when implementing AI solutions, care providers should look to ensure that their procedures are HIPAA compliant. All these will ultimately result in improved care.
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