Meaningful Consent In Electronic Health Information Exchange: A Technology-Centric Approach

Abstract

Editor's note: This post is coauthored by Kathryn Marchesini and Joy Pritts. Patients’ trust in how their health information is managed is essential to the success of emerging models for electronically sharing patient health information. Patients may be unfamiliar with, and therefore may not trust, exchanging health information through certain types of third parties such as health information exchange organizations (HIEs). Recognizing this, the Health Information Technology Policy Committee (HITPC), a federal advisory committee of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), recommended that patients be given a “meaningful choice” as to whether their health information is exchanged through certain types of HIEs. In furtherance of this recommendation, ONC sponsored a project to identify the factors that patients would want to know when making a decision whether to participate in this type of electronic health information exchange (eHIE). Based on this analysis, ONC sponsored a project to develop educational and informational materials as an example of how health care providers and HIEs may educate patients about their model of eHIE and their choices pertaining to the confidentiality and sharing of their health information.