Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Practices in Healthcare– A.J. Burns and M. Eric Johnson, Vanderbilt University
Despite the many impressive technology-enabled advances in modern medicine over the past several decades, concerns over costs, reliability, and security have hindered the adoption of IT in the health sector. However, as in other industries, healthcare has seen dramatic increases in the use of personally-owned devices. In fact, 88.6 percent of those working in healthcare report using their smartphone for work. All the while, 54 percent of US organizations report that they’re unable to determine if off-site employees are using technology and informational resources in a way that addresses corporate and regulatory requirements. This lack of oversight is especially problematic for the health sector where research reveals that healthcare workers often fail to maintain basic security hygiene on their devices (e.g., 41 percent report having no password protection).
The trend toward mobile computing is radically transforming how individuals interact with IT. For example, in 2014, comScore reported that for the first time, more than half of all digital media in the US was consumed in a mobile app. In the health sector, enabled by low entry barriers and lax (often non-existent) regulation, the number of mobile health (mHealth) apps available to consumers now exceeds 100,000, with millions of total yearly downloads. Yet when it comes to these available apps, the industry provides little transparency about either the mHealth data’s security and privacy or the usage patterns among physicians and patients that have downloaded these apps. In a recent special issue on IT security in IEEE IT Professional, THaW researchers highlight emerging issues related to mobility and security in healthcare: BYOD and the mHealth application ecosystem.
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