CAREER: Health Information Privacy Protection: System and Social Aspects

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Abstract

The experience of providing or receiving medical care has a very personal dimension. Quoted from the Hippocratic oath: "Whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my dealings with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to be holy secrets". The 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) required the Administration to issue regulations protecting the privacy of health information. Such a regulation gives consumers the right to see, copy, and correct their own health information and the right of being notified as to how their health information is going to be used and shared. It also imposes new restrictions on those who hold health information. However, legal protection alone is not enough as it can only be applied after the problem has occurred, when the damage has already been done. Moreover, law enforcement is usually expensive, slow, and complex. The goal of this project is to design a comprehensive technical infrastructure that guarantees the enforcement of health information privacy protection. The problem of data protection and privacy is addressed on a technical level, thus preventing any violation of a privacy policy in advance rather than correcting it after it has occurred. The intend of the project is to demonstrate that health information privacy solutions can be designed to achieve meaningful benefits without penalizing society with undue financial burdens or worse, with the compromise of public safety.