On this blog, we’ve had a lot of discussion about the problem of human behavior when it comes to cybersecurity. For example, we have looked at the Sony Pictures breach, which was caused by spear-phishing emails. We looked at Edward Snowden’s hack of the NSA, which he accomplished by simply calling agents and requesting their login credentials (a combination of “pretexting” and phone phishing). We even examined the notorious agent.btz worm that spread through the entire DoD network when an agent used a USB drive he found in a parking lot. While all of the abovementioned data breaches were accomplished by different means, they all have one thing in common—all three of them employed some form of human-based tactic. The biggest reason that humans have potential to be a data security factor can be summed up in two words… Social Engineering.

Last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced it will be implementing a two-week extension period for practices attesting to Meaningful Use. The deadline originally fell on Leap Day - February 29 - but the extension period will push back the final day to March 11. The extension applies to all eligible professionals, eligible hospitals and critical aspect hospitals participating in Meaningful Use program.

If you’ve been paying attention to current events these days, you’re likely already aware of the Zika virus outbreak that’s hitting the Americas. Cases of Zika are now beginning to pop up in North America, which has prompted the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to order their Emergency Operations Center to assume a Level 1 activation status (its highest level), in preparation for a possible nationwide outbreak in the United States. A Level 1 activation places CDC personnel into overdrive, allowing for 24/7 response capabilities. Just to give you an idea of how serious this is, the CDC has only ordered Level 1 activations three times in their 70-year history—after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, during the H1N1 outbreak of 2009, and during the 2014 Ebola epidemic. Of course, the World Health Organization (WHO) already declared the Zika virus a “global health emergency” back on Feb. 1, 2016.

In our last blog article, we took a look at how human behavior is the most frequently encountered threat to data security. So, what to do? You can’t have 100 percent control over every problematic aspect of human behavior, after all. However, there are some ways for you to simply remove the human element from your data security equation, such as purchasing a private, HIPAA compliant Cloud or adopting a SaaS-based EMR/EHR solution.

The future appears to be bright the ambulatory EHR market.. According to Frost & Sullivan's US Ambulatory Electronic Health Record Market: 2015-2020 report, the ambulatory EHR market is expected to grow by a whopping 30 percent throughout the next five years, increasing at a compound annual growth rate of 5.3 percent. This projection comes after prior mass expansion of the market due to incentives from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Ever since the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was introduced in 2009, the healthcare industry has placed an enormous priority on implementing more electronic software in clinics.

When CMS Chief Andy Slavitt announced (via Twitter) earlier this month that Meaningful Use would be “effectively over,” I swear I could hear the collective sighs of relief and shouts of joy coming from thousands upon thousands of U.S. healthcare providers. Not to be a killjoy, but please don’t start doling out the rapid-fire high fives just yet. Slavitt’s entire tweet stated that “In 2016, MU as it has existed—with MACRA—will now be effectively over and replaced with something better.” He may have jumped the gun a little bit, because the hard truth is that Meaningful Use is not over… not by a longshot.

Andy Slavitt, the acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, sent shock waves throughout the medical industry last week. Meaningful Use - as we know it today - is likely to end in 2016. "The Meaningful Use program as it has existed, will now be effectively over and replaced with some better," Slavitt said at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference last Monday. Needless to say, many people within the healthcare IT industry responded to Slavitt's big announcement by sharing their thoughts on social media. Here's what they had to say: