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Financial Support: Dr. Blease is a John F. Keane & Family Visiting Scholar at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Ms. Walker, Dr. DesRoches, and Dr. Delbanco receive financial support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Cambia Health Foundation, and Commonwealth Fund of New York. The funders had no role in designing or preparing the manuscript or in deciding to submit it for publication.

I also spent hours coordinating between his cancer doctors and the team taking care of him in the hospital. I requested that his records descriptions of his surgery and pathology reports be sent to his cancer team. When their opinions contradicted those of the physicians on site, I helped my dad make his own informed decisions. I repeatedly reminded him that his care is his choice, even though it often feels like doctors call the shots.

However, the authors argued, the narrative really should be shifted to the fact that providers routinely and legally share health data electronically under HIPAA, whether or not their organizations retains HIPAA responsibility. Sharing with patients and patients third-party apps is consistent and should be just as routine, they stated.

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announces that it has settled its ninth enforcement action in its HIPAA Right of Access Initiative. OCR announced this initiative as an enforcement priority in 2019 to support individuals’ right to timely access to their health records at a reasonable cost under the HIPAA Privacy Rule.NY Spine Medicine (NY Spine) has agreed to take corrective actions and pay $100,000 to settle a potential violation of the HIPAA Privacy Rule’s right of access standard. NY Spine is a private medical practice specializing in neurology and pain management with offices in New York, NY, and Miami Beach, FL.

Giving patients agency over their health information by giving them clear access to it should be promoted, not hampered. Such access allows them to have second opinions easily, switch providers if necessary and even download the data that institutions have about them. If major actors arent supporting this view, then outsiders will come into play.

he Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rightssettledwith Premera Blue Cross for $6.85 million and a corrective action plan, after an audit into the insurers 2015 data breach that impacted 10.4 million patients revealed systemic noncompliance with the HIPAA rule.The OCR settlement with Premera is the second largest in agency history. The largest was imposed on Anthemfor$16 million, followingits 2015 data breach that affected74 million patients.

Figure 1 from the study tells an interesting story about consumers in the pandemic and their growing sense of agency and engagement: Deloitte found that one-half of people were extremely or very likely to tell doctors they disagree with them, and another 29% said theyd be somewhat likely to speak up to their doctors. Thats 80% of consumers saying they would be likely to disagree with physicians, a vast majority of folks showing self-determination in their health care flows across all generations, from Gen Z to Seniors the most likely to speak up to their doctors.

Along with the above topics, I loved how Drew Ivan framed out multiple definitions of interoperability including: organizational interoperability, device interoperability, cross-organizational interoperability, and patient interoperability. Check out the video interview below to hear how he framed it and how you can help make interopability a reality in your organization.

Although, it was interesting to see interoperability, real-time data analytics, and surveillance on the chart as well. What might be even more challenging is that most healthcare organizations were dealing with all of the above all at once during COVID-19.

Amazon Halo accessory bandsSource: AmazonThis weeks launch of the Amazon Halowearable represents a critical new entrant not only into the health-tech wearable industry, but also into the broader health care ecosystem.Amazons Halo will compete with Fitbit and Apple Watch, and start-ups like the Oura Ring. But the device not only allows customers to track things like exercise and sleep, which are common in fitness wearables, but can also track emotional changes by listening to the wearers tone of voice and can present a 3D body image with a body fat percentage.In aparallel announcement, one of the largest electronic medical record companies,Cerner Corporation, said that users of the Halo device will have the option to upload information collected by the device to their physicians Cerner health record, beginning with the Sharp Health System in San Diego.These developments potentially represent a step forward for physicians to make use of health data that patients generate on their own.But the new functionality of Halo also raises new privacy implications, which Ive spent my career focused on, both at private companies and at the federal government. A company that has changed our expectations around convenience and personalized recommendations will now be selling a device and membership to collect some of the most intimate health details of a persons life. And much of the conversation in the wake of Thursdays announcement has rightly centered on trust as Amazon makes a more direct entry into consumer health care.So going forward, the company would be well-served to keep several key topics in mind:No standard rules for data collection from wearablesIn 2016, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) the federal government team responsible for health and informatics policy development delivered a report to Congresshighlighting basic legal gaps in consumer protection collected via fitness trackers, compared to devices and systems governed by the rules governing privacy known as HIPAA.I was formerly the Chief Privacy Officer of ONC at the time, and worked on this report.Currently, neither Amazon, nor Apple, nor any other retail fitness tracker is required by federal law to maintain any particular privacy standard. (California residents may benefit, though, from the California Consumer Privacy Act.) This is an important point.