Why Blockchain is the Best Technology for e-Signatures in Healthcare
Implementing the right e-signature solution can streamline your healthcare workflows and save your staff enormous time and frustration from having to manually gather patient signatures and securely store those documents.
But you also need to find out whether an e-signature provider's security protocols are sufficient to satisfy the privacy requirements of healthcare regulators. After all, those electronic signatures will in most cases be attached to documents containing highly personal, sensitive information about your patients. The process your organization uses to store and protect such documents could make the difference between compliance and noncompliance.
Your medical practice maintains electronic records of numerous forms containing patients' personal health data and various administrative documents—along with signatures from both the patients themselves and other providers in their continuum of care.
Question: Does the e-signature process your practices uses to collect and store these electronic records meet HIPAA standards for patient data confidentiality and security?
Additionally, keep in mind that HIPAA—along with other industries' data-privacy regulations, such as SOX and GLB—demand not only the security of personal data but also the ability to quickly retrieve that data upon consumer request or to meet a regulatory audit.
Once again, blockchain offers unique advantages. First, it's important to remember that most federal data-privacy laws, including HIPAA, are intentionally vague about which systems and processes regulated businesses should use. Regulators expect businesses to identify and deploy the most sophisticated and proven data-protection solutions feasible. And few technologies have ever been demonstrated to be more secure or tamper-proof than blockchain.
Also, because blockchain-based data is broadcast to numerous, decentralized private or external networks, and every update to those sites is recorded in chronological order, it is impossible to alter an existing block of data in any way without creating a record of the update. From a regulatory standpoint, this means your practice will be able to demonstrate to auditors that your patient data is not only secure but that it has never been altered or otherwise compromised since your team placed it in secure electronic storage.
Bottom line: Blockchain-based e-signatures give your organization a method of storing and securing electronic records in a way that will meet even the strictest data-privacy laws.
To learn more about jSign, the first simple, e-signature solution built on blockchain, visit www.consensus.com/jsign.
