Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

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Feds Seek To Educate Patients On Info Sharing

David F. Carr | Information Week | September 17, 2013

Using a combination of guidelines and open-source software, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is trying to encourage healthcare organizations to obtain "meaningful consent" as part of the process of sharing patient information online.

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For mHealth To Succeed, We'll Need Standards

Bill Ash and Kathryn Bennett | mHealthNews | July 18, 2014

Do you FitBit? It’s a question that’s on the lips of millions of consumers, given that the device manufacturer captured a whopping 67 percent of total wearable fitness trackers sold in 2013...

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Government Agencies Face Big Hurdles In mHealth App Innovation

Judy Motti | FierceMobile Healthcare | December 31, 2014

Governmental agencies face a wide spectrum of challenges in creating mHealth apps, ranging from a changing development culture to potential litigious issues, revealed a new report published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research...

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Hacker Calls Health Security "Wild West'

Erin McCann | HealthCare IT News | June 11, 2014

As head of the security consulting firm Secure Ideas, [Kevin Johnson's] job involves probing into organizations' networks and applications to identify vulnerabilities. And what he sees in healthcare terrifies him...

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Hackers Exploit Heartbleed To Swipe Data Of 4.5 Million

Erin McCann | Healthcare IT News | December 12, 2014

In the second biggest HIPAA breach ever reported, one of the nation's largest healthcare systems has notified some 4.5 million of its patients that their personal information has been snatched by cybercriminals...

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Halamka on MU3 Regs: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

On Friday March 20, CMS released the Electronic Health Record Incentive Program-Stage 3 and ONC released the 2015 Edition Health Information Technology (Health IT) Certification Criteria, 2015 Edition Base Electronic Health Record (EHR) Definition, and ONC Health IT Certification Program Modifications. Perhaps the most important statement in the entire 700+ pages is the following from the CMS rule:  "Stage 3 of meaningful use is expected to be the final stage and would incorporate portions of the prior stages into its requirements."

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Halamka: Next ONC Chief Faces Small Budgets, Big Challenges

Jennifer Bresnick | EHR Intelligence | October 9, 2013

The next National Coordinator for Health IT has some big shoes to fill, says Beth Israel Deaconess CIO John Halamka, and will face an era of shrinking IT budgets, converging deadlines, and hard choices. [...] Read More »

Half Of Healthcare Organizations Charge Patients For Copies Of Records

Akanksha Jayanthi | Becker's Hospital Review | January 7, 2015

Patient engagement in healthcare is increasingly becoming a priority for organizations, but for patients whose providers don't offer patient portals, most still have to request copies of their paper and electronic medical records...

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Harris Team Will Recode VA Health Care System to Meet HIPAA Deadline

David Hubler | Washington Technology | October 28, 2011

Harris Corp. has won a five-year, $5.3 million contract from the Veterans Affairs Department to provide disease classification coding remediation. The award calls for Harris to assist the VA’s Health Administration Center Cache System comply with the new International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems medical coding standards, according to an Oct. Read More »

Hawaii and Health Care: A Small State Takes a Giant Step Forward

Ann Waldo | O'Reilly Radar | August 21, 2012

In an era characterized by political polarization and legislative stalemate, the tiny state of Hawaii has just demonstrated extraordinary leadership. The rest of the country should now recognize, applaud, and most of all, learn from Hawaii’s accomplishment. Read More »

Health Care Data as a Public Utility: How Do We Get There?

Mohit Kaushal and Margaret Darling | Brookings | May 18, 2016

Despite the technological integration seen in banking and other industries, health care data has remained scattered and inaccessible. EHRs remain fragmented among 861 distinct ambulatory vendors and 277 inpatient vendors as of 2013.Similarly, insurance claims are stored in the databases of insurers, and information about public health is often kept in databases belonging to various governmental agencies. These silos wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, except for the lack of interoperability that has long plagued the health care industry. For this reason, many are reconsidering if health care data is a public good, provided to all members of the public without profit...

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Health Care in a Post-Privacy World

Someone knows you are reading this. They know what device you are using.  They know if you make it all the way to the end (which I hope you do!).  They may be watching you read it, and listening to you.  They know exactly where you are right now, and where you've been. As FBI Director James Comey recently proclaimed, "there is no thing as absolute privacy in America." Director Comey was speaking about legal snooping, authorized by the courts and carried out by law enforcement agencies, but, in many ways, that may be the least of our privacy concerns...

Health Industry Struggling To Keep Up With Growing ID Theft Problem

Dan Bowman | FierceHealthIT | February 10, 2014

The rise in medical identity theft in the U.S. in recent years--and in particular, theft involving a breach in technology--has been swift and has left many concerned about the effectiveness of privacy regulations, according to a recent Stateline report. Read More »

Health IT 2014: Interoperability, Ebola And Healthcare.gov 2.0

Billy Mitchell | FedScoop | December 18, 2014

Health IT in 2014 continued its path toward a system of interoperable and open data to improve patient care with IT systems...

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Health Policy And Implementation Challenges To Achieving Big Data Outcomes

John Loonsk | Government Health IT | April 29, 2013

Big Data must be near the top of its hype cycle by now. As with other technologies, it may eventually deliver on a great deal of this hype, but the outcomes will probably arrive later than the current frenzy would suggest. Read More »