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With technological advancement and increased use of Digital Healthcare comes the need to protect customers' personal identities and healthcare information. HIPAA plays a major role in maintaining the privacy of such data and is widely deployed in healthcare software development.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a civil law, that is developed to safeguard and secure personal healthcare information, that is shared among various entities for health benefits, applicable in the United States of America. HIPAA sets standards for the secure handling and storage of PHI, and healthcare software and solutions must comply with these standards to protect patient privacy and prevent potential financial and reputational harm from HIPAA violations.

The following bodies are encompassed in the HIPAA:

• Covered entities, refer to the healthcare providers, health plans, and healthcare clearinghouses.
• Healthcare business associates who provide healthcare benefits and related services to the entities.
• Patients who are the receiver of healthcare services.
• Department of Health and Human Services - the government agency, that enforces HIPAA laws and regulations, on Healthcare Solutions.
• State Attorneys General, is entitled to take action on those entities that violate HIPAA.

To ensure the healthcare software is compliant with HIPAA, the following three security rules are adopted:

• Administrative Safeguards: This rule ensures the formation of an administrative body to secure the ePHI.
• Physical Safeguards: This insists to protect the electronic information systems and related buildings and equipment.
• Technical Safeguards: This rule works on securing the technology in use, by assuring access controls, audit controls, transmission security, and encryption.

Of these three rules, it is essential to follow the Technical safeguard rule, while developing and implementing Healthcare Software.

Here are a few conditions that are considered an act of violation of the HIPAA:

• The violation was caused as the user was not aware of violating the same.
• The violation has happened for a reasonable cause, and not due to willful neglect.
• The violation has happened due to willful neglect.
• The violation is caused by covered entities, in terms of sharing private information.

Healthcare software companies are obliged to have contracts in place with their business associates, such as healthcare CRMs, that outline their respective HIPAA obligations. Employees involved with PHI must be trained on HIPAA privacy and security requirements, and healthcare software must have procedures in place for responding to security incidents and reporting any breach of unsecured PHI.

Following HIPAA, digital healthcare solutions can help to protect the confidentiality and privacy of PHI, and ensure that patients receive the highest quality of care possible. This eventually promotes trust in the healthcare system. In a digital age where personal health information is increasingly being stored and shared electronically, HIPAA compliance is crucial to ensuring that patient’s personal and medical information is kept secure and confidential.

To conclude, HIPAA is an essential component of digital healthcare, providing the necessary protections for personal health information in the face of rapidly evolving technology. Whether you are a healthcare provider, a software company, or a patient, it is important to be aware of HIPAA and to ensure that all digital healthcare solutions are HIPAA-compliant to protect the privacy and security of personal health information.

Hospital Management System:

The Hospital Management System is a software developed and utilized to digitize the day-to-day operations in a healthcare organization, specifically in hospitals. With a high number of visitors, comes an extensively high quantity of data, that needs to be collected, stored, and further operated or retrieved. Hospital management software is designed to ease the daily operations in the hospitals, at every department, from front desk activities, until discharge in case of inpatients. This requires having a reliable Hospital Database Management Systemin use, that can handle high loads of requests and information processing.

Data used with Hospital Management Software:

As mentioned, hospital management software serves the entire hospital management functionalities, online. This indirectly refers to a high amount of data being processed every day, to have information on every activity happening within the hospital. The most active components, that generate data for a hospital management system are the patient, the doctor, and the staff. With each activity they do, comes the requirement to manage more information on a day-to-day basis.

This ranges from the basic data of the patient’s appointment number for a particular Doctor, and could even be the data on the status of room availability or the record of bills generated for the day. In simple terms, usually, a hospital database handles data on administrator, patient (both inpatient and outpatient), doctor, staff, room, lab, and bills.

The Integrated Hospital Database Management System:

A Hospital Database Management System handles all information regarding the activities happening in a hospital. This happens only because the database is completely integrated, and all the data within is interconnected. This database handles the following data:

● Patient information 

● Appointments of the day 

● Information on Doctors consulting 

● Staff in the hospital 

● Lab-related data 

● Bills generated 

● Medical records

● Availability of rooms, and Operation Theatres 

● Record of prescriptions

This gives the complete view of all the information that is accessed from the Hospital Management System, on a daily basis. For instance, if the user wants to fix an appointment for a patient, they do so by using the data related to the patient and the doctor. Later, as the consultation happens, medical records and prescriptions are generated and stored in the database for future use. Once the consultation is done, the billing happens, based on the type of consultation or treatment. All this is accomplished for a particular patient and this is done by having each piece of information integrated with the patient record.

The purpose of using Hospital Management Software:

Generally, a healthcare organization faces a steady number of people visiting them every day, and thus there is a regular number of appointments to be handled. This makes the first need for having a hospital management system in place. With this software, the workload distribution is dealt with seamlessly.

A dependable Hospital Management Systemassures the safety of the patient’s medical records, all on the cloud, thus accessible from anywhere and at any time. It is completely integrated and helps to perform managing the operations, all from a single interface. This, in turn, reduces the need for any manual intervention and also assists in reducing the time taken for accomplishing every task.

Eventually, using a hospital management system helps to maintain precise records, and gives the possibility to serve the patients promptly, managing the complete operations of a hospital system.

Investment in health is the best way of investment to lead a full and healthy life. People have started to invest in health and undergo health check-ups regularly. People have started to realize that prevention is better than cure, and what better way to prevent than getting regularly tested and checking on their well-being?

As the number of labs outgrows every day, the utilization of machines to collect samples is also increasing. When labs get more samples to process from various sources, machine interfacing is helping labs in making their work easier and faster. In this blog, let’s discuss some of the best and most modern ways by which labs can collect patient samples, avoiding all the hassle. The 4 efficient ways for lab sample collection are:

• Walk-in  sample Collection

• Collection of the sample at Home

• Business to business Sample collection

• Franchise-based sample collection

Walk-in Sample Collection:

This method of sample collection is the most personal easily accessible way to collect samples from patients. In this era of online-based life, it is a step towards betterment that laboratory tests are also made available with ease of access.

Patients can directly walk into the laboratories and give the samples. Labs will process the sample in the laboratory and give reports. In case, the samples need to be processed by the main processing centers, the samples will be sent to the main processing centers and then collected back by the laboratories after the processing is over. Patients will be able to collect their detailed reports from the laboratories they visited.

Sample Collection at Home:

For many patients, deviation in health is a sensitive issue. Sometimes trustworthy lab institutes might be far away from the patient’s home. This leads to long hours of travel and long hours of waiting for the test to be taken by patients. The whole process might be a bit demotivating for the patients and increase their stress.

In this case, labs will visit the patient's home and collect samples for testing. The Healthcare industry is reaching new heights by making it possible for patients to remain in their safe confinement and get their health tested in their comfortable time without physically leaving their homes.

After collecting the samples they will be processed in the labs or sent to the main processing center and a detailed report will be obtained and sent to the patients.

Home Sample Collection is beneficial for:

• Bedridden patients

• Post-surgery patients

• Elderly patients

• Chronically ill patients

• Pregnant ladies

Business-to-Business Sample collection lab:

There are more competitors in the field of healthcare than in any other field. Their competition is that they perform better in serving the health of other people. This service needs to be done in an effective and time-saving manner which would put the patient at ease with the laboratory.

Business-to-business helping with sample collection can help you gain more recipients and many doctors recommending your clinic. Two or more businesses who are specialized in various fields of laboratory testing can partner up together and jointly help each other in each field. Big labs can partner with small labs and collect samples.

This way the businesses can direct patients who need specific tests in a diagnostic not available in their lab but available in the partner's lab. Business-to-business sample collection can help them mutually gain a lot of patients and thereby trust in the system.

Franchise-based Sample Collection Lab:

Establishing a fully equipped diagnostic center in a city is viewed more than a business opportunity and as a service to the better health of mankind. Such diagnostic labs should be working at their 100 percent capacity with state-of-the-art equipment that delivers quality results.

Attaining such a high level of quality for the sample collection lab is difficult if you start fresh. It would be best to join an already established company and start a new franchise that can help in diagnostic sample collection.

Having a franchise with a top company in sample collection and diagnostics will help you better in getting more patients to the lab and better management of the center.

With the already established name and fame of the company, the job for you would be easy.

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