Healthcare Data, HIPAA Compliance, and Akku

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has been effective in the USA since 1996.

The Act actually has five different section titles, namely Health Insurance Reform, Administrative Simplification, Tax-Related Health Provisions, Application and Enforcement of Group Health Plan Requirements, and Revenue Offsets – however, the mention of ‘HIPAA Compliance’ most often refers to compliance to the second title – Administration Simplification.

This is the most challenging aspect of the HIPAA Act, as it comes with strict regulations on protecting the data of patients in an industry that is often a major target for data breaches and malicious activity. Identity and access management across applications used in a healthcare facility, therefore, becomes critical to HIPAA compliance.

Here’s how Akku can help in ensuring data privacy and preventing both outsider and insider attacks on patient data, and, ultimately, compliance to HIPAA’s stringent regulations.

Protecting your data

• Akku strengthens security around the login process by allowing you to set up and enforce a strong password policy as well as multi-factor authentication to reinforce password-based security
• It also employs a custom salted-hash encryption methodology – a combination of salting and hashing techniques – for user credentials and data

Preventing unauthorized access

• Akku allows you to exercise tight control over which users have access to what applications and data, so that access is not available to users who may not require it
• It prevents accidental and malicious data breaches by allowing access to applications only from whitelisted network IP addresses and devices
• The system also automatically blocks suspicious access attempts at abnormal times or from unexpected locations, and also enables the set up of time-based and location-based restrictions

Ensuring privacy and accountability

• Every Akku implementation is set up independently in a separate server instance, so privacy on the cloud is ensured
• Akku provides administrators with complete visibility by maintaining detailed logs maintained for every activity taking place across the apps and in the server

Beyond HIPAA

In addition to helping your healthcare facility become HIPAA compliant, Akku also makes it easy to set up integrations across your Hospital Information System (HIS), Lab Information System (LIS), Patient Management System (PMS) and more. This, in turn, improves collaboration between various departments and enhances overall productivity.

To know more about Akku’s complete set of features and their specific benefits to your facility, contact us today!
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