Dive Brief:
- In response to the dramatic increase of huge healthcare data breaches in the past year, the Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC) and the National Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (NH-ISAC) have signed a memorandum of understanding to better coordinate security initiatives.
- The collaboration is to develop better risk mitigation, response and recovery post-HIPAA events.
- The organizations will work together to speed the adoption of secure, identity-validated health information exchanges via the Direct protocol, according to Healthcare IT News.
Dive Insight:
Some additional areas the groups will work toward include: Educational campaigns, information sharing, incident response, sector and cross-sector impact analysis, and situational awareness intelligence. Lee Barrett, executive director of EHNAC, said the collaborative effort should minimize the impact of cybersecurity attacks.
The global healthcare cyber security market will reach $10.85 billion by 2022, according to a report by Grand View Research. The average cost of a hospital data breach tops more than $2 million - with costs increasing with the size of the facility, as previously reported by Healthcare Dive.