Identity theft and fraud is a growing concern in the medical industry as hackers can steal patient data through electronic databases. Patient data can be the personal information of the patient including their id card information, SSN number, and medical history. Patient data is far more valuable in the black market than credit card information. However, there are solutions available that can help the medicinal industry to avoid the risks of dealing with frauds. To understand the solution, first, we need to understand the risks related to a patient data breach. 

Medical Industry Paying the Price of Data Breach

The health care system has already faced a lot of losses due to the patient data breach. Unfortunately, it is expected to face a rise in medical identity theft protection due to the HITECH act that requires the healthcare system to move its records online. The online system is easier to hack and steal patient data.

According to Protenus Breach Barometer, in 2019, the healthcare industry saw around 41.4 million worth of data breach of the patients. It was enabled by a 49% increase in hacking. Even after the world is in crisis due to covid-19, the medical industry is still facing the rise in fraudulent activities and data breach in 2020.

If we start to look into the data breach records from the last 10 years, we can discover that it has impacted more than 175 million medical data. A research institute, Ponemon, investigated that the amount of expenses on average a company has to address due to data breach is $211 per data breach. They also discovered that the companies that do not follow the regulations implemented by the HITECH act can face a loss of $1.5 million in the form of penalties.

How Does Data Breach Occur

According to the research, most of the data breach has occurred through hacking. But here are some other methods through which criminals can steal patient data.

●Phishing

This is a cyberattack. Criminals contact the victim through an email, a text message, or a phone call and try to get their personal information like their passwords or SSN number. They pose as a legitimate government organization to get the information.

●Malware

This is another form of cyberattack that manipulates the victim by making them open a link which can further hack their device. This way they can steal their passwords and other important information.

Know Your Patient Solution

There is AI-based software that helps to stop identity theft and patient data breach in the medical sector. Know your patient (KYP) is an alternative KYC (know your customer) protocol that can be used in the healthcare industry to verify the identity of the patient before dealing with them in any way.

How KYP works with AI solutions is that at the time of registration the patient is required to submit their basic information like their ID card, name, date of birth, photo, or government-issued documents, etc. This could also be known as patient identifiers. Whenever the patient must come for treatment of prescription, they must submit a picture of their ID card along with their selfie. The picture and the ID card is verified against the previously submitted data extracted through OCR. The authenticity of the ID document is also verified by this automated solution to ensure that the ID document used is real.

With this process, you can be certain if the patient's identity is authentic and not stolen. The patient’s information is protected. It is not directly stopping the criminals from data breaching but this interference defeats their purpose which in turn can decrease the patient data breach crime rate in the health care sector.