Federal healthcare officials are trying to figure out how to remove— or at least significantly reduce—what they say is a barrier to their ability to share health information with the private sector. The obstacle is the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), a set of information security requirements that were mandated for U.S. federal government…
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Child DNA donors should have their say
Biobanks should revamp how they handle DNA from healthy children, says an international team of bioethics experts. Children whose parents have signed them up for long-term studies should not have their genetic data distributed or made public until the donors consent at an older age, says the team, which publishes its recommendations today in Science….
Nationalized health care, stimulus and privacy rights
John D. Penn, a partner in corporate law firm Haynes & Boone, has a commentary in the Fort Worth Business Press. He argues that: Creating one set of national health records for everyone (enacted in the 2009 economic stimulus law) and requiring all healthcare providers to be substantial users is an irreversible step toward nationalized…
Your Prescription Data has been Sold for Profit
Annual Medical Report comments on the New York Times article about the sale of prescription data: However, the New York Times article failed to mention prescription data providers Ingenix, owned by UnitedHealth Group Inc., and Milliman, Inc. For example, one of Milliman, Inc.’s information exchange products, IntelliScript, is: “a data aggregation service that provides individual…
Google, Microsoft execs criticize Obama's EHR plan
Top executives at Google and Microsoft sharply questioned the structure of the Obama administration’s $20 billion health information technology plan at a meeting of a presidential technology council on Thursday. […] [David Blumenthal, national coordinator for health information technology] emphasized the importance of ensuring patient privacy in a national health system and said unless there…
Tories to let patients amend medical records online
Patients could amend their own medical records and leave comments on symptoms, medication and treatment, under radical plans unveiled by the Conservatives today. In a move which could be dubbed “Wiki-health”, a Tory government under David Cameron will allow people to access online health records, which are currently restricted. Patients would be prevented from changing…