Access To Health Data Research Articles

Emerging Blockchain Technology Solutions for Modern Healthcare Infrastructure

With a growing trend in medicine towards individualized, patient-centric care, traditional health information technology limits progress. With high administrative costs and the lack of universal data access, contemporary electronic medical records serve more the institution rather than the patient. Blockchain technology, as presently described, was initially developed for use in financial markets, serving as a decentralized, distributed ledger of transactions. However, certain inherent characteristics of this technology suit it for use in the healthcare sector. Potential applications of the blockchain in medicine include interoperable health data access, data storage and security, value-based payment mechanisms, medical supply chain efficiency, amongst others. While the technology remains in nascent stages, it is essential that members of the healthcare community understand the fundamental concepts behind blockchain, and recognize its potential impact on the future of medical care.

Multi-Level Security in Healthcare Using a Lattice-Based Access Control Model

Controlling access to sensitive personal information is a primary concern in healthcare. Regardless of whether access control policies are determined by patients, healthcare professionals, institutions, legal and regulatory authorities, or some combination of these, assuring the strict enforcement of policies across all systems that store personal health information is the overriding, essential goal of any healthcare security solution. While a comprehensive healthcare security architecture may need to impose specific controls on individual data items, most access control decisions will be based on sensitivity levels automatically assigned to information classes by a “sensitivity profile,” combined with the authorization level of the user. This article proposes the use of multi-level security, defined by lattice-based sensitivity profiles, to ensure compliance with data access restrictions between systems. This security approach accommodates the complexities needed for health data access and benefits from existing, proven tools that are used for defense and national security applications.

Texas task force to address mental health audit

Police officials in Austin, Texas, have formed a task force to address the conclusions of an audit that found the Austin Police Department could do a better job interacting with people with mental illness, Police Chief Brian Manley wrote in a memo Nov. 29, the Austin American‐Statesman reported Dec. 1. The audit found there are not enough mental health experts to assist police when they interact with people with mental illness, and that a third of the 24 people killed in Austin police shootings from 2010 through 2016 were having mental health crises. The Austin Police Department formed the committee to address the audit's findings in collaboration with Austin Travis County Integral Care and the local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Manley said in the memo. The committee's co‐chairs are Austin Police Assistant Chief Joseph Chacon, Dawn Handley of Integral Care and Karen Ranus of NAMI. The city will pay $75,000 to hire a consultant to craft the committee's final report, Manley wrote. Specific issues to be explored include police training, 911 dispatch, mental health data access and sharing, and outcome tracking.

Findings from 2017 on Consumer Health Informatics and Education: Health Data Access and Sharing.

Summary Objective: To summarize the state of the art during the year 2017 in consumer health informatics and education, with a special emphasis on sharing health data and accessing personal health information (PHI) from patients' and consumers' perspective. Methods: We conducted a systematic search of articles published in PubMed using a predefined set of queries which identified 228 potential articles for review. The section editors then screened these articles according to topic relevance and selected 15 candidate best papers for full review and scoring by a panel of international experts. Based on the scores and the reviews, four papers received the highest score and were selected in a consensus meeting as the best papers on health data access and sharing from consumers' and patients' perspective. Results: These four papers were categorised into the following topics: 1) data sharing for research and governance in privacy protection; 2) use of personal health information and individual privacy concerns; and 3) consumers' views and demographic characteristics regarding health data sharing and the use of digital health portals. Overall, it was surprising to see only a small number of papers reporting original research in this area. Conclusions: Patients understand the need for sharing information to facilitate best care and to enrich biomedical knowledge. When confronted with the reality of accessing information systems for their own information, patients are concerned about usability as well as privacy. Overall, there is a need for more emphasis on: 1) considering privacy as a feature defined by design; 2) using specific consent approaches and data sharing mechanisms for recruiting clinical trial participants; 3) taking into account socio-demographic characteristics when promoting consumer access to personal health information; and 4) defining indicators of high-quality care to incorporate healthcare professionals' level of caution when accessing patients' medical information and fostering patient trust in data exchange. Ultimately, privacy mechanisms should be part of the design process and not only be implemented when security has been breached and violated.

Access and Disclosure of Personal Health Information: A Challenging Privacy Landscape in 2016-2018.

Summary Objectives: To assess the current health data access and disclosure environment for potential privacy-protecting mechanisms that enable legitimate use of personal health information while preserving the rights of individuals. To identify the gaps and challenges between increasing requests and expanding uses of such information and the regulations, technologies, and management practices that permit appropriate access and disclosure while guarding against harmful misuse of such information. Methods: A scoping literature review focused on (1) regulations affecting access and disclosure of personal health information, (2) the uses of health information that challenge access and disclosure boundaries, and (3) privacy management practices that may help mitigate gaps in protecting patient privacy. Results: Countries and jurisdictions are developing laws, regulations, and public policies to balance the privacy rights of individuals and the unprecedented opportunities to advance health and health care through expanded uses of health data. Regulations and guidance are evolving, but they are outpaced by the increasing demand for and the challenges of managing access and disclosure. Mechanisms such as consent and authorization may not always be adequate. Mechanisms that advance principled stewardship are more important than ever. Conclusions: Access and disclosure management are important dimensions of privacy management practices. This is a volatile period in which diverging public policies may reveal how best to balance access and disclosure of personal health information by individuals and by institutional custodians of the information. Approaches to access and disclosure management, including the roles of individuals, should be a focus for research and study in the years ahead.

Building a Privacy, Ethics, and Data Access Framework for Real World Computerised Medical Record System Data: A Delphi Study. Contribution of the Primary Health Care Informatics Working Group.

Privacy, ethics, and data access issues pose significant challenges to the timely delivery of health research. Whilst the fundamental drivers to ensure that data access is ethical and satisfies privacy requirements are similar, they are often dealt with in varying ways by different approval processes. To achieve a consensus across an international panel of health care and informatics professionals on an integrated set of privacy and ethics principles that could accelerate health data access in data-driven health research projects. A three-round consensus development process was used. In round one, we developed a baseline framework for privacy, ethics, and data access based on a review of existing literature in the health, informatics, and policy domains. This was further developed using a two-round Delphi consensus building process involving 20 experts who were members of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI) Primary Health Care Informatics Working Groups. To achieve consensus we required an extended Delphi process. The first round involved feedback on and development of the baseline framework. This consisted of four components: (1) ethical principles, (2) ethical guidance questions, (3) privacy and data access principles, and (4) privacy and data access guidance questions. Round two developed consensus in key areas of the revised framework, allowing the building of a newly, more detailed and descriptive framework. In the final round panel experts expressed their opinions, either as agreements or disagreements, on the ethics and privacy statements of the framework finding some of the previous round disagreements to be surprising in view of established ethical principles. This study develops a framework for an integrated approach to ethics and privacy. Privacy breech risk should not be considered in isolation but instead balanced by potential ethical benefit.

A Role based Health Data Access Control Model for Patient Information Protection on Cloud Computing Environment

A Role based Health Data Access Control Model for Patient Information Protection on Cloud Computing Environment

The next frontier: Fostering innovation by improving health data access and utilization.

The next frontier: Fostering innovation by improving health data access and utilization.

개인화된 건강 데이터 처리를 위한 2-Step 개방형 시스템의 설계

The purpose of ICT Healing platform is the prevention of chronic disease. It is intended to early warning of the disease through the information such as the bio-signals and lifestyle. In this paper, we provide a 2-Step open system(TOS) for personalized health data access. TOS is connected between the personal health related data providers and service providers of individuals ICT Healing platform, a software engine for relaying personalized health data. The proposed system, to operate in isolation to 2 step in personal health document repository Inbound module and Outbound module to provide an inquiry service to external organizations. Therefore, we propose a personalized editable Manifest concept for defining data exchange between Step. This can be used as a reference model to collect the personal health information is scattered in many health related service institutions (Hospitals, Fitness Centers, Health Examination Centers, Personal Health Device, etc.) and under private-led liberalization.

A HIPAA-Compliant Architecture for Securing Clinical Images

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA, instituted April 2003) Security Standards mandate health institutions to protect health information against unauthorized use or disclosure. One approach to addressing this mandate is by utilizing user access control and generating audit trails of the various authorized as well as unauthorized user access of health data. Although most current clinical image systems [e.g., picture archiving and communication system (PACS)] have components that generate log files for application debugging purposes, there is a lack of methodology to obtain and synthesize the pertinent data from the large volumes of log data generated by these multiple components within a PACS. We have designed a HIPAA-compliant architecture specifically for tracking and auditing the image workflow of clinical imaging systems such as PACS. As an initial first step, we developed HIPAA-compliant auditing system (H-CAS) based on parts of this HIPAA-compliant architecture. H-CAS was implemented within a test-bed PACS simulator located in the Image Processing and Informatics lab at the University of Southern California. Evaluation scenarios were developed where different user types performed legal and illegal access of PACS image data within each of the different components in the PACS simulator. Results were based on whether the scenarios of unauthorized access were correctly identified and documented as well as on normal operational activity. Integration and implementation pitfalls were also noted and included.