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Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Medical Records. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Medical Records. Show all posts

Monday, April 13, 2020

Lawmakers Push Again for Info on Google Collecting Patient Data

Rob Copeland
Wall Street Journal
Originally published 3 March 20

A bipartisan trio of U.S. senators pushed again for answers on Google’s controversial “Project Nightingale,” saying the search giant evaded requests for details on its far-reaching data tie-up with health giant Ascension.

The senators, in a letter Monday to St. Louis-based Ascension, said they were put off by the lack of substantive disclosure around the effort.

Project Nightingale was revealed in November in a series of Wall Street Journal articles that described Google’s then-secret engagement to collect and crunch the personal health information of millions of patients across 21 states.

Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.), Bill Cassidy (R., La.), and Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) subsequently wrote to the Alphabet Inc. GOOG +1.35% unit seeking basic information about the program, including the number of patients involved, the data shared and who at Google had access.

The head of Google Health, Dr. David Feinberg, responded with a letter in December that largely stuck to generalities, according to correspondence reviewed by the Journal.

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Ascension earlier this year fired an employee who had reached out to media, lawmakers and regulators with concerns about Project Nightingale, a person familiar with the matter said. 

The employee, who described himself as a whistleblower, was told by Ascension higher-ups that he had shared information about the initiative that was intended to be secret, the person said.

Nick Ragone, a spokesman for Ascension—one of the U.S.’s largest health-care systems with 2,600 hospitals, doctors’ offices and other facilities—declined to say why the employee in question was fired. 

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Apple’s Move to Share Health Care Records Is a Game-Changer

Aneesh Chopra and Safiq Rab
wired.com
Originally posted February 19, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Naysayers point out the fact that Apple is currently displaying only a sliver of a consumer’s entire electronic health record. That is true, but it's largely on account of the limited information available via the open API standard. As with all standards efforts, the FHIR API will add more content, like scheduling slots and clinical notes, over time. Some of that work will be motivated by proposed federal government voluntary framework to expand the types of data that must be shared over time by certified systems, as noted in this draft approach out for public comment.

Imagine if Apple further opens up Apple Health so it no longer serves as the destination, but a conduit for a patient's longitudinal health record to a growing marketplace of applications that can help guide consumers through decisions to better manage their health.

Thankfully, the consumer data-sharing movement—placing the longitudinal health record in the hands of the patient and the applications they trust—is taking hold, albeit quietly. In just the past few weeks, a number of health systems that were initially slow to turn on the required APIs suddenly found the motivation to meet Apple's requirement.

The article is here.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

State Supreme Court Establishes Right To Sue Over Medical Record Breaches

Edmund H. Mahony
Hartford Courant
Originally published January 10, 2018

The state Supreme Court established Thursday that patients in Connecticut have the right to sue doctors and other health care providers for the unauthorized and negligent disclosure of their confidential medical records.

The majority decision creates new state law and adds Connecticut to a growing number of states that allow patients to sue for damages over the release of private records by their physicians. Courts in Connecticut have held previously — as have courts elsewhere — that private suits were blocked by federal law under the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA law.

HIPAA laws establish procedures to protect medical records and empower government to impose civil and criminal penalties for violation. But HIPAA does not permit private suits to collect damages for unauthorized disclosures.

“Finally we have a remedy in Connecticut that recognizes that there is a duty of confidentiality, the breach of which can lead to compensation for damages,” said attorney Bruce L. Elstein of Trumbull, whose client, Emily Byrne, sued over an unauthorized release of her medical history.

The article is here.