Tip of the Week: Understanding Telemedicine

Telemedicine is an increasingly popular option in the healthcare industry. It’s basically a virtual meeting designed to deliver more direct methods of healthcare consultation compared to the traditional go-to-the-office type of medical visit. Since healthcare is an increasingly more enticing target for hackers, you will need to do what you can to protect this data. Here are four tips to help you mitigate the risks associated with telemedicine.

Use Strong Passwords

Telemedicine accounts, just like every other account on the Internet, will require that you set up a password. You should use a unique combination of characters to create a complex password—one that is easy to remember yet hard to predict. You can use a passphrase to great effect using at least three words that are completely unrelated to each other while also using a combination of upper and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. A multi-factor authentication method is also of incredible importance here to provide an extra layer of security.

Use a Virtual Private Network

You want to make sure that your connection is private, so a virtual private network is your best bet to make this happen. A VPN creates an encrypted pathway to help ensure the privacy of all data sent along the connection. You are basically setting up a direct connection to your healthcare provider that makes the interception of such data difficult, to impossible.

Make Sure You Protect Your Privacy

Similarly, you will want to conduct your telemedicine meetings in private in a personal space, such as an individual office or a bedroom. This means that you shouldn’t be conducting these types of meetings in public, as you don’t want the wrong people to overhear your conversations with your doctor. Remember, healthcare is a private matter, and you should treat it as such whether it’s through your device or at the doctor’s office.

Use Security Software

Telemedicine or not, you should have security software installed on any Internet-connected device anyway. This helps to keep your data secure. Your device should have spam filtering, anti-malware, and antivirus software, as well as firewalls to ensure that potential threats are halted before they gain access to your device. This goes for all devices, including smartphones and tablets.

What kinds of advice would you give to someone who is just trying telemedicine for the first time? Be sure to let us know in the comments, and subscribe to our blog for more information.