HIPAA Blog

[ Monday, January 23, 2006 ]

 

Arguing against privacy: this is an interesting point of view from the (British) Academy of Medical Science, this article notes that the accumulation of medical information in easily accessed and collated electronic databases could be a boon to medical research, but that the ability to use that information is inhibited by "unnecessary" privacy concerns.

This is what makes crafting good HIPAA regulations hard: you want to balance privacy concerns, where the disclosure of information is bad or harmful, against the positive effects of widespread access and use of information. If you want the best privacy, restrict all uses or disclosures of information. If you want the best healthcare, have no restrictions at all on uses or disclosures of information. The more you move toward privacy, the more you prevent what could be fruitful exchanges of information.

Jeff [10:54 AM]

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