A Proposed National Health Information Network Architecture and Complementary Federal Preemption of State Health Information Privacy Laws

Abstract

The U.S. is currently experiencing a healthcare crisis including problems of quality and affordability. A national health information network (NHIN) holds great potential for reducing these problems by linking healthcare-related entities and patients to provide real-time information flow. The current evolutionary strategy for NHIN development is resulting in an unaffordable delay. NHIN architecture and patient privacy laws are interdependent, and information flow is impeded by disparate state privacy laws layered onto federal law. We propose a revolutionary NHIN architecture and a complementary framework for preemptive federal law that will allow a true NHIN to develop much faster.