Requests for health data by insurer raise questions

In a story reported by the Hartford Courant, a series of requests for health records sent to Connecticut doctors by Ingenix have garnered attention both for the nature of the requests and the manner in which…

If you build it, will anyone come?

In all the discussion about health information exchange and electronic health records and establishing trust among public and private sector organizations, what’s often lost is the voice of the consumer. The goal of widespread EHR adoption…

Healthcare providers missing the mark on risk assessments

As the comment period continues for the recently published proposed rules and draft certification criteria and standards associated with “meaningful use” of electronic health records, it appears that a large proportion of healthcare providers are not…

NHIN begins to look at user-level authentication

During the 2008 trial implementations process and subsequent limited production operation of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN), health information exchange between two participating entities relies on authentication at the entity (that is, organization) level, rather…

HHS plans to test re-identification of “de-identified” health data

In a special notice posted yesterday on FedBizOpps, the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is getting ready to put a contract out to fund research on re-identifying datasets that have been de-identified…

Information sharing imperatives may trump security

While the technical infrastructure required to support information sharing don’t really change from context to context, security and privacy requirements applying to senders and receivers of information do vary quite a bit depending on the domain….

Progress in securing health records, but still a long way to go

An excellent article this week in InformationWeek by Mitch Wagner provides an nice overview of the privacy and security issues related to widespread deployment of electronic medical records, noting both the recent progress made in these…