In today’s world, sustainability has become one of the keywords in the medical industry too. But to remain sustainable the medical industry must learn to innovate and find ways to stay ahead by integrating the fast and ever-growing changes of the technological world. In all these compliance with the medical regulations and system while developing compliant software is holding a great significance. But a software developer just cannot develop software for medical needs, as a need for a HIPAA compliant is present. Since compliance is leading in developing medical software, it is also vital to know the cost of HIPAA-compliant software. Before we go into further details one should know the cost for the development.
What Is HIPAA and How It Helps?
The medical industry has seen a huge success due to the usage of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. With the use of EHR, the entire healthcare system process is easy for the patients, caregivers, doctors and even the stakeholders. Maintaining the record is necessary for future purposes but what if the data is breached? Definitely, it can cause mayhem and even in cases can turn out to be life-threatening. The huge responsibility is on the shoulders of a healthcare provider for keeping the patients’ data safe and other relevant details. To build trust one needs to maintain transparency amongst caregivers, patients, doctors and the stakeholders.
But with so much information available and data flooding the HER, making sure the data remains safe is an upheaval task. So, how can the issue be resolved from a healthcare software developer’s viewpoint? It is here the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) comes into action.
In brief, HIPAA can be defined as a law ensuring businesses will help in building the software preserving the data while sharing the EHR is compliant to the rules and regulations stated by the federal and the state medical boards.
Over the years HIPAA has seen an upgrade constantly. This is why every software company needs to intend to develop a healthcare application abiding by HIPAA compliance and needs to keep on making upgrades timely. Also, the EHR’s developer and the provider have to constantly monitor the software making it relevant to improve the medical industry.
The features a HIPAA compliant app should have:
A standardized measure in the health industry for every software is to be HIPAA compliant. Any development of healthcare software by any company needs to offer the EHR service under the PHI guidelines with great security of the data along with the other precautions. Apart, from meeting the technology requirements one need to make sure the following features should be there:
- Technical Safeguarding
With this feature, an assurance is present that no unauthorized person can access the data. Also, the security of the PHI data according to the NIST standards since at times they are required to be transmitted in spite of the firewall security should be there. Hence the following must be taken care of as part of the safeguarding process:
- Only authorized members can access any information
- Unique identification should be given to each user
- Must have regular back-up along with an in-place and active emergency plan to ensure users can access every time even during server downtime
- Security of the transmission of data without any interruptions especially from any unauthorized user
- Development of the system on a secured platform for robust security with the help of a multi-factor authenticator, passwords, and firewalls
- A higher level of security should be given to the data transmitted beyond the firewall
- Physical Safeguarding
No matter what the location is, the assessment of data should be prohibited with a high level of security. Since PHI can be easily stored on clouds, servers and even different electronic systems like mobile devices from any unauthorized resource should be protected. A few of the features that should be there for physical safeguarding are:
- Only the authorized people should have physical access
- The availability of emergency mode for accidental situations for situations like data accessibility and disaster recovery management
- A data safety plan that should be well documented defined and structured along with the physical safety of any PHI storage device.
- Recording of any repairs, hardware changes and modifications in detail for the retrieval
Some of the other features too that should be included like:
- Automatic logoff in times of inactivity
- Regular update of the antivirus along with the software
- Updated firewall and web filtering features thwarting websites with viruses and pop-ups causing damage to software or hardware
- Monitoring of user logins automatically time-to-time
During the phase of HIPAA compliance software, one thing that needs to be made sure by the developer is the transfer, removal or disposal of data even for future use. As the development of HIPAA compliance app takes a lot of time.
What is the cost of HIPAA-compliant software?
Typically there are various factors contributing to the overall cost of HIPAA-compliant software, some of them are the type of software that you intend to build based on the following:
- The organization type
- Organization size
- Culture of the organization
- Location of the organization
- Number of associates and stakeholders involved
Generally, a small entity that covers the likes of doctors, hospitals, clinics, patients and insurance companies will cost between $4,000 and $12,000. Software for a medium or large-sized organization can be anything from $50,000 and beyond.
Also, depending on the place from where you are sourcing your service for the software will determine the cost, for example, an Indian developer will be way cheaper than the one you hire from the US.
Final Words
Whatever you decide about the development of the app, make sure you do not compromise because of the cost. Developing a HIPAA compliance software that is not compliant will not benefit you, so it is advisable to get in touch with a professional.
