Office for Civil Rights (OCR)

See the following -

5 Tips For Cybersecurity Incident Response

Rick Kam | Government Health IT | February 2, 2015

Experts and politicians agree that security and privacy incidents are a given...And as the new cyber-risk handbook from the National Association of Corporate Directors puts it: “If a sophisticated attacker targets a company’s systems, they will almost certainly [be breached].”...

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Are Your Medical Records Open To Theft?

Staff Writer | Healthcare IT News | August 21, 2014

A major criticism of EMRs is the companies that make them have financial incentives to keep them from being easily shared...

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DeSalvo Touts Interoperability, Blue Button At Consumer Health IT Summit

Katie Dvorak | FierceHealthIT | September 15, 2014

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT jumped into National Health IT Week in the District of Columbia by placing the focus on the consumers' role in their own healthcare...

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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's Report on The April 2015 HIT Standards Committee Meeting

The April 2015 HITSC meeting focused on the Certification Rule NPRM and a comprehensive review of the Federal Interoperability Roadmap. I suggested that a guiding principle for the committee’s work is to emphasize the enablers in the proposals while reducing those aspects that create substantial burden/slow innovation.   As a federal advisory committee our job is to temper regulatory ambition with operational reality.

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Maintaining Health Data Privacy in Precision Medicine Push

Elizabeth Snell | Health IT Security | March 31, 2017

As cybersecurity threats continue to evolve and put PHI at risk, precision medicine guidelines need to be updated to account for new health data privacy threats, according to a recent opinion piece published in the Oxford University Press. The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System Senior Counsel Jennifer Kulynych, JD, PhD explained that data re-identification methods are not foolproof, and it can be difficult to determine exactly how individuals’ genomes are being used...

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New Patient-Focused Commitments to Advance the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative

Press Release | The White House | July 8, 2015

Today, marking six months of progress to advance [Precision Medicine Initiative] PMI, the White House is hosting a Champions of Change event honoring extraordinary individuals from across the country who are making a difference in the lives of patients and driving precision medicine forward. In addition to celebrating these Champions, Federal agencies and private-sector groups are stepping up to the President’s call to action to advance the PMI by making important commitments to... Read More »

ONC Delays Launch Of Blue Button Connector Until Late February

Neil Versel | MobiHealthNews | January 15, 2014

The US Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT is slowing its rollout launch of a website meant to encourage patients to take a more active role in their own care. Read More »

Virus Nails Hospital, Causes Massive Data Breach

Erin McCann | GovernnmentHealthIT | March 18, 2014

No hospital is too small, evidently, to serve as fodder for hackers. The latest hospital cyber-attack is reported by a small-town rural hospital in Colorado. The hospital discovered it had a computer virus that had collected and encrypted patient data in a hidden file system.

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What’s In Store For Health IT In 2014?

Brian Ahier | HL7 Standards | January 23, 2014

2013 was a good year for health IT and has laid the foundation for 2014 to be the biggest year ever for the industry. Read More »

When Patient Data Lands On Google

Erin McCann | Government Health IT | September 11, 2014

A Huntsville, Ala., clinical diagnostics laboratory has notified more than 7,000 individuals of a HIPAA breach after the company discovered protected health information contained on a third-party server had been unsecured for nearly three years...

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