The Role of Standards in Medical Information Security: An Opportunity for Improvement

Standards are an essential feature in an unregulated field such as computing. Thus, when computing and the healthcare environment are combined, the requirement for standards is imperative. For instance, the combination of sensitive information and mobile technology presents increased complexity in information security. Whilst we have many worldwide standards for information security including OSI 17799, little has been done in interpretation of these to ensure quality. Standards are written for specialists in the field and in the case of information security, for security specialists, yet we expect them to be read and implemented by non-technical healthcare staff. This results in the limitation of standards to be easily applied. This paper suggests that a more holistic approach is taken to the development of standards, in which standards and associated context specific guidelines are developed.