Do you have doubts about AWS HIPAA? Read this article and use the checklist to create a secure and reliable cloud solution for your healthcare organization.
Join the DZone community and get the full member experience. Nowadays, most medical providers across the globe tend to implement cloud-based architecture for their medical services. And it’s not surprising, especially considering today’s pandemic reality; medical software is a must. However, to build a highly secure solution to deliver medical services, you must abide by the US 1996 law, namely the HIPAA Security Rule. This legislation represents a set of required and adequate protections for managing electronic confidential patient information and avoiding its disclosure without prior patient’s knowledge and even consent. So, if you want to develop a medical solution and make your healthcare services cloud-based, you will have to apply the latest technologies for maintaining data compliance. To build cloud-based apps according to the Privacy Rule, most healthcare providers apply Amazon Web Services (AWS) due to its increased agility, security, and innovation potential. Below, we’ve prepared best practices and specific steps to consider when building an AWS medical web app. You can use these tips as your helpful AWS HIPAA checklist to ensure your product meets compliance terms. Keep reading! New AWS users are usually wondering, «Is AWS HIPAA compliant?» Before we go to best practices, let’s answer this important and quite complicated question. To answer briefly, AWS alone doesn’t guarantee HIPAA compliance, but it offers services that open the door for HIPAA compliance. Let’s examine what this means. Amazon supports HIPAA compliance, and you can utilize its reliable services to create a cloud-based solution that will manage, maintain, and transfer confidential patient information. However, it’s not enough simply to use AWS. The main idea behind AWS HIPAA compliance is to have excellent knowledge of how to realize it in AWS, rather than simply using Amazon services. So, as a result, to deal with ePHI in a highly protected way, you should bear in mind the AWS HIPAA security rules and standards and, of course, correctly fit them. Let’s dive deep into AWS HIPAA compliance best practices and learn a handy checklist that helps you build a medical solution with a high level of stability and protection. Now, let’s look more closely at best practices that allow healthcare organizations to meet AWS HIPAA compliance. Before storing or managing any private medical records on AWS, you have to sign and execute a BAA with Amazon Web Services to verify that AWS delivers adequate protection of ePHI. BAA means Amazon Web Services share some of your legal obligations and guarantee that you’ll be informed of any data breach. To put it simply, you take care of the technological and executive protective measures of your platforms, operating systems, apps, and other solutions. As for AWS HIPAA-compliant services, they are responsible for the security of their database, cloud, networks, and others. If you want to protect your stored data, you should remember about encryption of all PHI data “in-transit” and “at-rest.
