With the number of healthcare data breaches increasing each year, many healthcare leaders are thinking more seriously about this threat and how to prevent it in their own organizations. In 2023, there were more than 144 million stolen or exposed medical records.¹ In 2024, as of mid-July, 374 healthcare data breaches were reported to the Health & Human Services Office of Civil Rights (OCR), impacting more than 45 million patients.¹ The healthcare industry is a major target because it offers an abundance of financially valuable personal information. The most common breach types in healthcare are hacking and ransomware; incidences of both have risen by more than 250% over the last five years, as reported by the OCR.²

More Opportunities for Healthcare Data Breaches

The rise in interconnected systems and push for interoperability inevitably creates more opportunities for hackers to find ways to breach systems. As such, it becomes vitally important that healthcare organizations and their laboratories remain vigilant with sensitive patient data. This vigilance includes having a strong disaster recovery plan and ensuring their systems are deployed in secure environments.

Consider a Cloud Deployment to Improve System Security

Consider the benefits of a cloud-hosted LIS. Orchard Cloud Services uses the latest advancements in security and data integrity to improve system reliability and business continuity. Any Orchard solution can be deployed in a cloud environment. Orchard’s cloud-based deployments also accelerate implementation times and improve overall security and compliance.

Our fully redundant data centers are designed to protect and secure critical applications with redundancy throughout the production infrastructure. Our cloud services include security auditing and intrusion protection, vulnerability scans, and virus monitoring, dramatically lowering the risk of security breaches. We offer prescribed disaster recovery plans that allow you to keep patient data secure and meet business continuity goals—with a 99.9% uptime guarantee backed by a Service Level Agreement (SLA).

If you are considering moving your LIS to the cloud, feel free to reach out to your Account Manager. We also have a short webinar that you might like, Reduce Security Worries When You Host Your LIS in the Cloud.

References

1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights Breach Portal: Notice to the Secretary of HHS Breach of Unsecured Protected Health Information. Accessed at: https://ocrportal.hhs.gov/ocr/breach/breach_report.jsf.
2. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. HHS Office for Civil Rights Issues Letter and Opens Investigation of Change Healthcare Cyberattack. Accessed at: https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/03/13/hhs-office-civil-rights-issues-letter-opens-investigation-change-healthcare-cyberattack.html.