Fred has a great post on why HIPAA should not be applicable. I will add the following, especially in the wake of GINA. People need crutches. Knowing there is a regulation there that addresses their fears in some ways is important. PHRs are not only going to be significant for our own health and wellness, but they can become part of a greater good, the development of therapeutics, or trying to understand disease. To enable all that, data ownership is the first key (we should own our data), and data access is the second. This latter one is the crutch people are looking for (most dont understand the former)
Your personal health: Google Health, HealthVault and HIPAA
Fred has a great post on why HIPAA should not be applicable. I will add the following, especially in the wake of GINA. People need crutches. Knowing there is a regulation there that addresses their fears in some ways is important. PHRs are not only going to be significant for our own health and wellness, but they can become part of a greater good, the development of therapeutics, or trying to understand disease. To enable all that, data ownership is the first key (we should own our data), and data access is the second. This latter one is the crutch people are looking for (most dont understand the former)
Technorati Tags: HIPAA, PHR, Google Health, HealthVault