Do you remember slightly more than six months ago, when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced it had reached separate settlements with Boston Medical Center (BMC), Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) for compromising the privacy of patients’ protected health information (PHI) by…
Category: Healthcare
‘Alexa, what’s my blood sugar?’—Amazon unveils HIPAA-compliant voice services
Conor Hale reports: Amazon has announced that its smartspeaker voice assistant Alexa is now HIPAA-compliant and can serve as your very own healthcare valet. To start, the retail and computing giant has paired up with six companies to develop programs that can harbor protected prescription information, book doctor appointments, track blood glucose levels and find…
Therapist/Child Confidentiality in Custody Cases: Who Should Hold the Waiver Privilege?
Daniel H. Stock writes: When Pat Benatar sang “Hell Is for Children” (1980, Giraldo, Benatar, Capps, BMG Rights Management), she might have been referring to the plight of minors in custody litigation. It only gets worse for children in custody fights who are in psychotherapy and want to keep communications between themselves and their therapists…
Council of Europe issues recommendation on health-related data
Sam Jungyun Choi, Harriet Fletcher and Katherine Kinchlea of Covington & Burling write: On March 28, 2019, the Council of Europe* issued a new Recommendation on the protection of health-related data. The Recommendation calls on all Council of Europe member states to take steps to ensure that the principles for processing health-related data (in both…