INFORMATION SECURITY IN HEALTH CARE: Evaluation with Health Professionals

Abstract: Information security in health care is a topic of much debate. Various technical and means-end oriented approaches have been presented over the years, yet have not shown to be sufficient. This paper outlines an alternative view and approaches medical information security from a health professional’s perspective. The Information Security Employee’s Evaluation (ISEE) is presented to evaluate and discuss medical information security with health professionals. The ISEE instrument consists of seven dimensions: priority, responsibility, incident handling, functionality, communication, supervision and training and education. The ISEE instrument can be used to better understand health professional’s perception, needs and problems when dealing with information security in practice. Following the design science approach, the ISEE instrument was validated within a focus group of security experts and pilot tested as workshops across five hospital departments in two medical centers. Although the ISEE instrument has by no means the comprehensiveness of existing security standards, we do argue that the instrument can provide valuable insights for both practitioners and research communities.