Health Privacy

About health privacy, World Privacy Forum key health privacy resources

The World Privacy Forum is extremely active in health privacy, with a long and successful track record of work in this area. We have done groundbreaking work in the area of medical identity theft, as well as substantive analysis and education on critical privacy aspects of health data such as medical research, genomics, and many other issues.

Some of our most frequently accessed health privacy resources include:

* A Patient’s Guide to HIPAA

* Medical Identity Theft Page (resources, reports, more)

* Health privacy tagged materials

* HIPAA tagged materials

* Electronic Health Records tagged materials

* Common Rule and Human Subject Research Protection tagged materials

* Genetic privacy tagged materials

We have many more publications and resources. For a full list of topics and publications, see our key issues page.

See below for health privacy news and content by date.

Mar 02 2015

Privacy News: How to be Skillful — Health Privacy Presentation

March 2, 2015 San Diego — WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon will be presenting back-to-back workshops for the National Network to End Domestic Violence on how those working with this vulnerable population group can be skillful in handling and navigating health privacy issues. The conference will be in New Orleans and is part of NNEDV’s

Feb 12 2015

Student Privacy 101: Health Privacy in Schools –What law applies?

Schools increasingly provide students with more health services. Health clinics, counselors on site, administration of drugs, and vaccinations are among the types of healthcare offered on school campuses ranging from kindergarten through graduate school. Given that schools may have sensitive health information, what law covers health record privacy for school records? The answer is important. It is also messy, because two laws can apply to this information. In some cases, no privacy law applies to the health records.

Feb 06 2015

Medical ID Theft a Threat for Anthem Breach Victims, Key Tips

Key Consumer Tips for Anthem Breach Victims: Be alert for the key areas of attack post-breach, including Medical ID theft Victims of the Anthem data breach should be aware of three potential areas for risk after the breach: Medical identity theft Financial forms of identity theft Spear phishing and phishing Medical ID theft is a

Jan 30 2015

Video: High Tech Health highlights from CES 2015

From advanced biosensors to healthy cities in China to robots and telemedicine, this is WPF’s video capture of the key trends and technologies at the 2015 Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. This video was premiered at Georgia Tech/Academy of Medicine on Data Privacy Day, 2015.

Jan 05 2015

Events: World Privacy Forum at Consumer Electronics Show

WPF is attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. We’re focusing on privacy and health and fitness technology, smart home tech/Internet of Things, and education and kid tech. Throughout the week we will be bringing you a stream of thoughts, images, and short videos via our Twitter and Instagram feeds. After the show, we will

New Report: Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new WPF report, “Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools.” This report sets out a definition of AI governance tools, documents why and how these tools are critically important for trustworthy AI, and where these tools are around the world. The report also documents problems in some AI governance tools themselves, and suggests pathways to improve AI governance tools and create an evaluative environment to measure their effectiveness. AI systems should not be deployed without simultaneously evaluating the potential adverse impacts of such systems and mitigating their risks, and most of the world agrees about the need to take precautions against the threats posed. The specific tools and techniques that exist to evaluate and measure AI systems for their inclusiveness, fairness, explainability, privacy, safety and other trustworthiness issues — called in the report collectively AI governance tools – can improve such issues. While some AI governance tools provide reassurance to the public and to regulators, the tools too often lack meaningful oversight and quality assessments. Incomplete or ineffective AI governance tools can create a false sense of confidence, cause unintended problems, and generally undermine the promise of AI systems. The report contains rich background details, use cases, potential solutions to the problems discussed in the report, and a global index of AI Governance Tools.
National IDs Around the World — Interactive map

About this Data Visualization: This interactive map displays the presence...
Report: From the Filing Cabinet to the Cloud: Updating the Privacy Act of 1974

This comprehensive report and proposed bill text is focused on the Privacy Act of 1974, an important and early Federal privacy law that applies to the government sector and some contractors. The Privacy Act was written for the 1970s information era -- an era that was characterized by the use of mainframe computers and filing cabinets. Today's digital information era looks much different than the '70s: smart phones are smarter than the old mainframes, and documents are now routinely digitized and stored and perhaps even analyzed in the cloud, among many other changes. The report focuses on why the Privacy Act needs an update that will bring it into this century, and how that could look and work. This work was written by Robert Gellman, and informed by a two-year multi-stakeholder process.