SOUND OFF: How urgent is digital healthcare security in Kamloops?
COUNCILLOR KELLY HALL OF KAMLOOPS is proposing a unique initiative that could assist in securing family doctors for thousands of residents. He envisions the City of Kamloops developing its own municipal medical clinic. The motion was introduced during the council’s last meeting and if approved, the clinic could benefit 40,000 people in Kamloops who don’t have access to a doctor. The idea is inspired by the medical clinic in the city of Colwood, a municipality west of Victoria which is the first of its kind in the country. Opening a medical clinic in Kamloops requires a strong focus on digital healthcare security from the start. This means integrating robust security measures to uphold ethical operations, legal compliance and patient trust. Digital healthcare security is not a separate task but an integral part of the entire process of opening a medical clinic in the city of Kamloops.
Why healthcare security matters
Recently, the Minister of Health acknowledged a data breach that targeted thousands of healthcare workers in BC. In 2024, an RCMP investigation indicated a possible privacy breach for thousands of employees who worked or currently work at the health authority. Interior Health officials said police contacted them last January 2024 regarding a document that contained data of about 20,000 people providing social insurance numbers and home addresses. Although there was no patient information in the document, the info covered people who worked at Interior Health from 2003 to 2009. It appeared some employees had their information used for fraudulent loans and other activities following the breach, according to a new investigative report by The Fifth Estate. This demonstrates that digital healthcare security is an urgent concern, given the massive cyber threats faced by healthcare organizations. Cybercriminals are getting smarter disguising daily information technology (IT) operations cleverly making it hard to detect threats.
Phishing, artificial intelligence-powered social engineering and e-mail address spoofing are some of the tricks employed by cyber crooks. Hence, it is critical to beef up healthcare security through awareness training and other strategies. According to the HIPAA Journal, healthcare data breach stats indicate an upward trend in the past 14 years. The journal also revealed that 2021 saw more data breaches than any other year. Therefore, healthcare security is quite urgent and needs to be solid to safeguard patient as well as healthcare worker data.
