Healthcare Privacy: How Secure Are the VOIP/Video-Conferencing Tools for PHI Data?

There is a high-tech term called telemedicine, which uses information technologies and telecommunication for exchanging medical information among patients and health service providers from different locations. Many video conferencing tools such as WebEx, Go To Meeting, Skype, Google+ Hangouts, etc. Are commonly used these days. Even though these tools vouch for some level of privacy and secured encrypted connections, there are still security risks and vulnerabilities associated with them such as data leaks, call intrusions, identity theft, etc. The risk is even higher during medical video conferencing as there involves many protected health information (PHI) data exchanges. And, any such violations or breach of PHI data can result in civil and criminal penalties as per the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). In this paper, we conduct a literature survey on the security level of such tools, associated risks and possible alternative methods or tools.