WPF to testify before NCVHS on emerging privacy concerns in health privacy — Beyond Digitization: Artificial Intelligence, APIs, and health privacy
WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon will testify before the full committee of the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS) regarding emerging privacy concerns in the healthcare environment, including the role of artificial intelligence, patient authorizations, and automated access to patient health information.
The NCVHS is the statutory [42 U.S.C. 242k(k)] public advisory body to the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) for health data, statistics, privacy, and national health information policy and HIPAA. The Committee advises the HHS Secretary and reports regularly to Congress on HIPAA implementation.
WPF has a long history of work in health privacy. In ED Pam Dixon’s first testimony before NCVHS in 2005, when asked to testify about risks in electronic health care systems, she discovered the issue of medical identity theft, coined the term, and subsequent to her NCVHS testimony, wrote the first known report about the crime of medical identity theft and its consequences to patients. Following the publication of the WPF medical identity theft report, in which WPF recommended medical data breach notifications to patients, California passed a medical data breach law based on the report recommendation. A few years later, HIPAA was updated to include medical data breach notification.
The 2019 NCVHS testimony will take place Wednesday, Nov. 13 before the full committee as well as the Office of the National Coordinator of HHS.
Relevant Documents and Meeting Information:
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NCVHS Meeting details:
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https://ncvhs.hhs.gov/meetings/full-committee-meeting-2/
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WPF 2005 NCVHS testimony https://www.worldprivacyforum.org/2005/08/public-comments-testimony-before-the-national-committee-on-vital-and-health-statistics-ncvhs-subcommittee-on-privacy-and-confidentiality/
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Patient’s Guide to HIPAA (updated 2019) https://www.worldprivacyforum.org/2019/03/hipaa/
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WPF Medical ID theft reports:
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Medical Identity Theft (2006) https://www.worldprivacyforum.org/2006/05/report-medical-identity-theft-the-information-crime-that-can-kill-you/
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The Geography of Medical Identity Theft (2017) https://www.worldprivacyforum.org/2017/12/new-report-the-geography-of-medical-identity-theft/
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WPF work on AI: WPF served as a delegate to the OECD AI Expert Group, and assisted in writing and finalizing the OECD Principles on AI, which were ratified as soft law in 2019 by OECD member countries. http://www.oecd.org/going-digital/ai/principles/