Health Records

Apr 05 2024

WPF to speak before the State House of Mongolia for its National Consultation on e-Health, and before the Human Rights Commission of Mongolia

5 April 2024, Paris, France — World Privacy Forum Executive Director Pam Dixon has been invited to speak at the State House of Mongolia for the Government of Mongolia’s National Consultation on e-Health. She will be speaking twice at this event; first, on the topic of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and second, on Big Data in e-Health. She will be presenting later in the week on AI governance and Privacy before the Ministry of Digital Development and Communications, and on the topic of AI Governance Tools before the National Human Rights Commission of Mongolia. All speeches will take place in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

Jan 26 2023

WPF advises HHS on confidentiality of patient records re: alcohol and drug treatment records

The World Privacy Forum (WPF) submitted comments on an important Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that proposes modifications of the protection requirements for substance use disorder (SUD) treatment records. Currently, health records regarding treatment for Substance Use Disorders receive special protections under what is called Part 2 regulations, or, 42 CFR Part 2. The changes proposed

Sep 27 2022

How New Procedural Controls Using the Privacy Act of 1974 Can Improve the Protections of Reproductive Health Information Held by Federal Agencies

September 2022 By Robert Gellman and Pam Dixon Download this Report Executive Summary This report suggests specific procedural and substantive ways that the Executive Branch can revise implementation of the Privacy Act of 1974 to restrict and more carefully administer some disclosures of reproductive health information by federal agencies to federal, state, and local law

Jun 03 2022

WPF urges HHS to clarify the harms of medical identity theft for victims

WPF has urged HHS to clarify the intersection between HIPAA compliance and harms resulting from medical identity theft in its response to the Request for Information from the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services regarding implementation of the HITECH Act. WPF has a long history of work on the issue of medical identity theft, which has informed its response to HHS.

May 18 2022

HIPAA Compliant, or HIPAA Covered?

One of the most common questions we receive is: what does HIPAA compliant mean? Well.. If a company or entity or health app is not covered by HIPAA, it may still say that it is “HIPAA compliant.” HIPAA compliant does not mean the same thing as being a HIPAA- covered entity. If you see the

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.