Data breaches at U.S. health-care providers are increasing as hospitals adopt electronic medical records and mobile technology without spending enough on security to ensure patient privacy, a research group said.
The frequency of data breaches at health organizations jumped 32 percent in 2011 from a year earlier, costing the industry an estimated $6.5 billion, according to a study released today by the Ponemon Institute LLC, a Traverse City, Michigan-based information-security research group.
Forty-nine percent of health organizations said that lost or stolen devices were to blame for breaches, according to the institute, which surveyed 72 hospitals and health providers. The study didn’t name the organizations surveyed.