Challenges in interrelated disciplines of information governance in effective e-Health systems

According to a new report from Accenture (NYSE: ACN), healthcare organizations planning large investments in e-health solutions face challenges in five interrelated disciplines of information governance - data privacy, confidentiality, security, quality and integrity.

“From working on e-health implementations around the world, we have built and are sharing this framework to help organizations address data privacy concerns, ensure compliance with standards and regulations, maximize the value of electronic health record systems, and support physician adoption.”

The report, Information Governance: The Foundation for Effective e-Health, details and explores specific targets for the five disciplines and provides an actionable framework that healthcare organizations, such as care providers, insurers, and public health organizations can use to perform a high-level assessment of their current information management situation, challenges and opportunities. The objective is to ensure investments in e-health are supporting strategic goals of increasing efficiency and reducing costs, reducing errors, and improving patient outcomes. The target areas for evaluation explained in the report are:

Data Privacy

• Patient consent models and mechanisms
• Patient-provider relationship-based access controls
• Patient access controls
• Effective data security and data handling policies

Data Confidentiality

• Role-based access control models
• Patient and provider record sealing
• Identification and authentication
• Anonymization and pseudonymization

Data Security

• Message integrity and communications security
• Event audit and alerting
• IT security audit
• Network integrity

Data Quality

• Error correction
• Data validation
• System and interface certification
• Standards-driven architecture

Data Integrity

• Code integrity
• System hardening
• Interoperability governance
• Standards-driven architecture and standards management

The new report draws heavily on Accenture's experience supporting health care organizations' efforts to transform administrative and clinical systems, capture and manage data, develop evidence-based insights, and connect fragmented health care systems.

"Health care organizations are making unprecedented investments in e-health systems, and this new framework speaks to the practical but rather complex implementation challenge, namely to ensure the investments are successful," said Mark Knickrehm, global managing director of Accenture's health care practice. "From working on e-health implementations around the world, we have built and are sharing this framework to help organizations address data privacy concerns, ensure compliance with standards and regulations, maximize the value of electronic health record systems, and support physician adoption."