Just imagine this… A doctor’s laptop containing Personal Health Information of about 1,000 patients gets stolen or lost. What is to be done next?
The first issue which comes to the mind in this scenario is that PHI should never be stored in a laptop in the first place. The correct practice would be to use EMR to store all the patient information on the server and in any case, PHI should never be stored in a laptop.
If, however, it does happen, then the advancement in technology these days comes to immediate aid. As soon as your laptop gets stolen you need to report it stolen and then the authorities start the process of tracking down your laptop (in the same way as they track stolen cars). Then if your laptop ever gets connected to a network, it will call back to the main center and receive the command to wipe out the laptop.
It will also give the authorities the information about where it was connected so the police can possibly recover the stolen laptop as well. This is the beauty of technology these days and an increasing number of companies are allowing this facility on their laptops these days.
