Hunton & Williams writes:
On July 10, 2015, the United States House of Representatives passed the 21st Century Cures Act (the “Act”), which is intended to ease restrictions on the use and disclosure of protected health information (“PHI”) for research purposes.
Currently, the HIPAA Privacy Rule permits the use and disclosure of PHI for research purposes without requiring authorization from an individual but does require that any waiver of the authorization requirement be approved by an institutional review board or a privacy board.
The Act amends the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (“HITECH”) Act to obligate the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to revise or clarify the HIPAA Privacy Rule…..
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