In light of the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is providing this bulletin to ensure that HIPAA covered entities and their business associates are aware of the ways that patient information may be shared under the HIPAA Privacy Rule in…
Category: Healthcare
Australian government secretly releasing sensitive medical records to police
Felicity Nelson reports: The Australian government is releasing highly sensitive medical records to police through a secret regime that experts say contains fundamentally flawed privacy protections. The Department of Human Services fields large volumes of requests for Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) data from state and federal policing agencies each year….
Israel Aims to Be Digital-medical Power, but First Must Iron Out Privacy Issues
Ronny Linder reports: Apart from natural gas, Israel doesn’t have a lot of natural resources: no oil, no gold, no iron ore and no magnesium. But it does have one resource that has become the gold of the 21st century: information – in particular, the kind that is both especially valuable but especially sensitive –…
Wisconsin at center of looming federal battle over health records
Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council, writes: On one side are regulators hoping to foster easier exchange of health data, some patient advocates and some researchers and healthcare app developers. On the other side are major health records firms such as Verona-based Epic, the American Medical Association, some healthcare systems, people worried about…