FEATURE: CYBERSECURITY
HEALTHCARE DATA CONTAINS PEOPLE’ S LIVES, THEIR HISTORIES, DIAGNOSES, TREATMENTS, EVEN GENETIC MARKERS AND MENTAL HEALTH RECORDS.
life, i. e. a child’ s diagnosis, a fertility record, a mental health note.
Once leaked, it can’ t be taken back – and the stakes go well beyond privacy.
Breaches or outages can put patient care at risk in real time. Imagine oncology patients missing a critical treatment window because ransomware froze scheduling systems, or paramedics unable to access allergy records in an emergency. These aren’ t hypotheticals. We’ ve already seen similar scenarios unfold in other countries. laws that govern how personal health information is collected, used and shared within each province’ s healthcare system.
But here’ s the reality check … those protections only apply if your data stays in Canada. Once it crosses borders, Canadian rules no longer shield it. Suddenly, your patients’ most personal information could be subject to foreign surveillance requests, political pressures or weaker international standards.
So basically, if your healthcare data isn’ t anchored on Canadian soil, you’ re rolling the dice with trust, reputation and patient safety.
We’ re seeing a shift... and it’ s a smart one
The good news? Healthcare leaders across Canada are waking up to this new reality. More organizations are actively taking control and bringing their data back home. Some are even moving it out of the cloud altogether, in a trend called cloud repatriation.
In 2024, IDC reported that nearly 80 % of organizations they surveyed said they plan to repatriate some of their data and workloads in the next year. That’ s not a small adjustment. It’ s a massive shift in how organizations are thinking about Digital Transformation.
Canada has some of the strongest privacy legislation in the world, from the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act( PIPEDA) – Canada’ s federal privacy law – to provincial health privacy
But this isn’ t about abandoning cloud. It’ s about being smarter with it. Many hospitals and health systems are adopting hybrid approaches. They are keeping sensitive patient records stored locally or in private
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