Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a U.S. federal law passed by the U.S. Congress in 1996, protects patients’ protected health information (PHI) and other medical records. This is a framework of rules and regulations essential to implement while building a healthcare application. It ensures the data stored and processed by healthcare providers are fully protected from unauthorized access and data breaches.
This not only protects the patient data but also enhances the security robustness of healthcare applications. As a result, business owners are hiring a reliable healthcare app development company to build a mobile application, giving them a competitive edge.
Step-by-step Process to Build Healthcare Apps Compliant With HIPAA
Conduct Thorough Research
As a reliable business owner, educating yourself about all possible rules and regulations related to HIPAA is essential. It will help you decide whether or not your healthcare app falls under HIPAA law.
This way, you can clearly explain your requirements to your healthcare app development company and ensure robust solutions.
Get Expert Help
Although all the information regarding HIPAA is available and can be found on their official website, implementing HIPAA’s rules and guidelines can take time and effort. Moreover, your application features and complexity add to the complexity level.
Therefore, it is crucial to hire a professional company with developers well versed in HIPAA and offer custom-made healthcare app development services. Getting help from experts will help you with essential consultations, system audits, and a seamless transition.
Not considering proper HIPAA guidelines can lead to heavy penalties. Read the blog on HIPAA-compliant app development to know more.
Evaluate Patient Data
Healthcare applications usually store and deal with confidential and sensitive patient data that must be safeguarded at all costs. You can check the information stored, shared, and maintained in the mobile app to distinguish the PHI data.
Also, identify the data that must not be stored or transferred via an app. This process will help you design a robust and error-free database.
Integrate HIPAA-Compliant Third Party Services
Building a HIPAA-compliant app from scratch can be a daunting task and costly as well. Therefore, it is best to integrate HIPAA-compliant infrastructure and solutions to create a secure and compatible application.
By using third-party solutions that are already HIPAA-compliant (known as IaaS — Infrastructure as a service), you can avoid additional costs and complexities. Such solutions are Amazon Web Services (AWS) and TrueVault.
Protect All Transferred and Stored Data
Now, it’s time for the most crucial step of the HIPAA-compliant app development process, i.e., encrypting data. With a proper encryption process, you can safeguard sensitive patient information.
Moreover, implement industry-leading security practices to ensure no security breaches. You can use multiple security levels to protect your data and prevent it from being stolen.
Test Your Application
Do you want to ensure your app works works perfectly fine and complies with HIPAA regulations? Invest in tailored app testing services. Overlooking the app testing process may end up frustrating business owners or service providers while increasing the cost of development.
In the Agile app development methodology, which mobile app development service providers widely use, the testing process is conducted after every step or build update. They test your application with both manual and automation processes and also fix the issues immediately as they arrive.
Also read: Leveraging AI and Machine Learning For Your BigCommerce Store
Conclusion
If you want to build a healthcare app compliant with HIPAA, keeping yourself up-to-date with the latest rules and regulations is essential. Moreover, it is an ongoing process and demands regular maintenance and support. Therefore, you must hire a company that offers healthcare app development services.
Overlooking HIPAA guidelines in healthcare app development can lead to data breaches, affecting the reputation of your company. Also, it can cost you a significant amount of penalties and loss of trust among customers. Therefore, when you kickstart your healthcare app development journey, HIPAA law must be taken into consideration.
