In order to protect the security and confidentiality of electronic health information, Congress has passed The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, also known as HIPAA. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act was signed into law on August 21, 1996. Among other things, the law encourages the development of a health information system through the establishment of standards and requirements for the electronic transmission of certain health information.



The purpose of HIPAA is to protect confidential healthcare information through improved security standards and it defines certain requirements for storing patient information. It creates awareness and provides guidelines for risk analysis, training, suggests policies to perform audit trails, disaster recovery and validates access control and encryption.