William Bria M.D.: Physicians and Data Security

To make sure their information technology strategies adequately address the needs of physicians, many hospitals have designated a doctor to serve as chief medical informatics officer. These physicians are working closely with CIOs, CSOs and others to help select and implement I.T., including technologies to keep clinical information secure. In this interview, William Bria, M.D., chief medical informatics officer at Shriners Hospitals for Children, describes how the organization's 22 charity care hospitals are striving to provide doctors with easy access to a wealth of clinical information while minimizing the risk of privacy violations. Dr. Bria, founder and president of the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems (AMDIS), also describes in detail the organization's use of: Two-factor authentication, including smart cards, at the hospitals; An additional authentication layer (codes generated by hardware tokens) for physicians accessing systems remotely; and New secure messaging technology that automatically encrypts e-mails detected to contain private information.