Are vaccine providers selling your health data? There’s not much stopping them

How a vaccine clinic scandal in Philadelphia shows the need for better health privacy laws.

 Google’s Totally Creepy, Totally Legal Health-Data Harvesting

Google is an emerging health-care juggernaut, and privacy laws weren’t written to keep up.

 It's Time To Modernize The HIPAA Privacy Rule

We are failing to seize a tremendous opportunity for patient empowerment and engagement that lies right in front of us. A clear HIPAA pathway could enable patient consent and preferences to be administered centrally by qualified organizations that help coordinate health information exchange. This would eliminate a lot of waste and confusion while giving patients a much higher-level of visibility into, and control over, how their information is used and where it goes than HIPAA currently allows.

 When Apps Get Your Medical Data, Your Privacy May Go With It

Americans may soon be able to get their medical records through smartphone apps as easily as they order takeout food from Seamless or catch a ride from Lyft. But prominent medical organizations are warning that patient data-sharing with apps could facilitate invasions of privacy — and they are fighting the change. The battle stems from landmark medical information-sharing rules that the federal government is now working to complete. The rules will for the first time require health providers to send medical information to third-party apps, like Apple’s Health Records, after a patient has authorized the data exchange

 Why Loosening HIPAA Requirements in Response to the Coronavirus Was Urgent and Necessary

What makes this latest development even more expansive is that CMS also waived enforcement of HIPAA health privacy law violations against providers acting in good faith. This means that everyday communication tools such as FaceTime and Skype, which previously couldn’t be used because they weren’t technically HIPAA-compliant, can now be used for doctors to evaluate patients.

Beyond the HIPAA Privacy Rule: Enhancing Privacy, Improving Health Through Research.

Research involving genetic information presents perhaps some of the most challenging areas for protecting the privacy of health information.

Companies Are Using Big Data To Track Employee Health And Pregnancies

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) protects confidentiality of personal healthcare information. But Janine Hiller, a law professor at Virginia Tech, notes in an interview with Popular Science, that if the firms only present employers with aggregated data and use sources such as search queries, the data they collect is no longer considered protected health information and is not covered by HIPAA.

Has Healthcare Privacy Gone Too Far?

In an attempt to avoid confusion, the Department of Health and Human Services has been issuing information and clarification on HIPAA, for individuals and professionals. For now, however, obtaining information on a loved one often comes down to an individual hospital's policy, and—hopefully—a little decency from care providers.

Hospital Ransomware Attacks: A HIPAA Breach?

The perpetrators of this worldwide extortion scheme have created a new world of headaches for organizations legally bound to compliance with the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules.

Hospitals Give Tech Giants Access to Detailed Medical Records

Deals with Microsoft, IBM and Google reveal the power medical providers have in deciding how patients’ sensitive health data is shared.

How Trump is using HIPAA to pick which medical details are released to the public

HIPAA protects every patient’s privacy, including Trump’s. But he seems to be using it for political advantage.

It's Your Right To See Your Medical Records. It Shouldn't Be This Hard To Do

At a time when many insurers and health information technology companies are busily assembling databases of hundreds of millions of medical records, Americans find it difficult to get access to their own.

The Future of Healthcare Could Be a Privacy Nightmare

The Amazon healthcare effort and CVS-Aetna merger raise lots of questions.

The Use Of Technology And HIPAA Compliance

Unique threats emerge every time new technology is used in healthcare, which is often where businesses unwittingly create a vulnerability for their patients. Using technology or software before it has been examined for its security risks can lead to HIPAA violations by giving hackers access to an otherwise secure system.

What is HIPAA, and what does it cover?

... a federal regulator launched a probe into a partnership that allowed Google to collect millions of patient records from the nonprofit hospital chain Ascension. At the crux of the investigation: whether the companies adhered to HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

What is HIPAA? 5 questions answered about the medical privacy law...

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s Privacy Rule is a federal law that went into force in 2003. The law prohibits health care providers and businesses and people working with them – including administrative staff, laboratories, pharmacies, health insurers and so on – from disclosing your health information without your permission.

When Federal Privacy Laws Protect Hospitals Instead Of Patients

HIPAA, as the law is commonly known, is open to misinterpretation — and sometimes provides cover for health institutions that are protecting their own interests, not patients.

Your Health Data Isn’t as Safe as You Think

Silicon Valley’s rush into the health-care business is challenging the antiquated protections of Americans’ medical histories

Your private medical data is for sale – and it's driving a business worth billions

Although information is anonymized, data miners and brokers can build up detailed dossiers on individual patients by cross-referencing with other sources