Protecting patient privacy has been recognized as the duty of health-care providers for about as long as doctors have seen patients. In 1996 that duty became a legal obligation when Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
HIPAA regulations safeguard patient’s personal health information but can also complicate the process of safeguarding public health. Information aggregated from the medical records of vast numbers of individuals is needed to develop new drug therapies and novel medical treatments, to stop epidemics or prevent other life threatening events.
In a study published in the September-October issue of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Jeff Friedlin, D.O., of the Regenstrief Institute, Inc. and the Indiana University School of Medicine, discusses a new computer program that may resolve the complex issue of privacy vs. public good. Dr. Friedlin writes about the Medical De-identification System (MeDS), a highly accurate and speedy computer software program he has developed and successfully tested for de-identifying patient information while retaining the essential data key to medical research.
Read more in Science Daily