Cambridge Health Alliance is one of many hospitals that has embraced health-care technology to improve patient care. Still, for doctors and nurses in this hospital network outside Boston, worrying about security when they input data into the system's computers requires a balancing act.

"You have the patient interaction, you have the computer, you have security and you're actually trying to think clinically about what to do next," explained Dr. Brian Herrick, chief medical information officer at Cambridge Health. "It has made things more difficult to interact with the patient."

During HIMSS 2016, I had the opportunity to talk to one of the true leaders in healthcare technology, Craig Richardville, Carolinas HealthCare Systems’ Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer who was recently named CIO of the Year by CHIME and HIMSS. Craig discuses a range of topics including interoperability and security challenges in healthcare, the government’s patient identification efforts, and Carolinas Healthcare Systems’ use of the palm vein biometric patient identity platform, Imprivata PatientSecure.

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As hospitals move to digitize records, they face a new threat, hackers. Recent attacks have forced some medical centers to pay ransom to regain access to their systems. While ransomware isn’t new, these attacks highlight hospital vulnerabilities. As Bertha Coombs reports from Boston, changes, however, are being made to prevent the next breach.