Health and Medical Information Discussion

Health and Medical Information Discussion essay assignment

Health and Medical Information Discussion essay assignment

1. Read about the Ransomware attacks on hospitals and then watch the YouTube video at the link below from CBS news discussing details of the “Ryuk” ransomware. After watching the video, discuss the ways that hospital efforts to comply with regulations like HIPAA and HITECH have made them more susceptible to ransomware attacks. (6 pts).

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2. How do you feel about the creation of the Coronavirus database as discussed in the WSJ this week.  Do you feel that the healthcare industry has an obligation to create such data resources.  How would HIPAA and HITECH impact such a database and what privacy issues from the privacy and human behavior article to do you see cropping up around this project?.  (7 pts)

Companies Seek to Pool Medical Records to Create Coronavirus Patient Registry

DATABASE WOULD MAKE MEDICAL HISTORIES FOR U.S. COVID-19 PATIENTS AVAILABLE TO GOVERNMENT AND ACADEMIC RESEARCHERS

Several health-care and software companies are seeking to create a registry of Covid-19 patients by pooling medical records from across the country, aiming to study how the disease is spreading, which population groups are most vulnerable and how effective proposed treatments are, people familiar with the matter said.

San Francisco-based Datavant Inc., which specializes in compiling medical data from a variety of sources, began spearheading one such effort in late March, one of the people said. Health-care technology companies Allscripts Healthcare Solutions Inc. MDRX -2.42% and Change HealthcareInc. CHNG -4.08% said they have committed to donate data for the effort. Health insurance provider Anthem Inc. ANTM 5.57% has been contacted about contributing medical claims data, an Anthem spokeswoman said.

The initiative is one of several sources of data the federal government is considering to monitor the spread of coronavirus in the U.S., another person familiar with the matter said.

Datavant’s proposed registry would be free for government and academic researchers to access, and would aim to include every patient who has been tested for Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

The registry wouldn’t include patient names or other identifying details, but would include detailed information about their past and current conditions and medications, drawing on data that originates from hospitals, pharmacies and health-insurance companies. The consortium is aiming to have data covering 80% of U.S. medical claims, including those submitted to private insurers as well as Medicaid and Medicare Advantage.

Researchers or government officials could use the data to investigate an array of questions about the illness, such as the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine and antivirals as potential treatment. President Trump has suggested the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment or preventive measure, though some public-health experts have advised against it until studies are conducted.

The data could also yield insights on which demographic groups tend to get the most extreme cases and require ventilator support, and which are resistant to infection, one of the people familiar with the matter said. Researchers also could use the data to understand infection rates among health-care workers and the effects of local policies such as social-distancing and stay-at-home orders.

Datavant is in touch with at least one federal agency, the Food and Drug Administration, about its initiative, the person said.

“The FDA recognizes the potential for many different real-world data sources to complement traditional clinical studies and speed the process of evaluating the impact of potential Covid-19 therapies,” an FDA spokesman said in a statement. “To that end, the agency is advancing relationships with partners in the public and private sectors to rapidly collect and analyze information in areas such as illness patterns and treatment outcomes.”

Change Healthcare’s president of network solutions, Kris Joshi, said in a statement, “We are facing an unprecedented health-care crisis, and data is a critical element in discovering how Covid-19 is progressing, what kind of interventions are effective and ultimately how we can remediate the situation.”

The Anthem spokeswoman said the company hasn’t committed to participating in the initiative. “Anthem takes the security of its data and the personal information of health plan members very seriously,” she said in a statement.

Merging several big data sources to create a single record for each patient will be a challenge. Datavant’s software could help accomplish that. To protect privacy, patients’ identifying details such as names and social security numbers will be “transformed through an irreversible process” into encrypted keys. Researchers will receive patient records tied to an anonymous patient ID.

The company hopes to attract additional data providers, including life-insurance providers and consumer DNA-testing companies, after the effort’s initial launch, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

Consumer DNA-testing company 23andMe Inc. is already providing data to scientists who are racing to determine whether gene variations make some people more susceptible to serious Covid-19 infection.

Cloud-based data-management company Snowflake Inc. said it is in discussions to host the database free of charge.

In addition to patients who were tested for Covid-19, the Datavant-led database might also include patients with common symptoms for the disease. It would indicate the institution where a patient was treated to help researchers study the effects of conditions at overcrowded hospitals

3.Discuss what HIPAA is meant to do around Health information.  Next, discuss how HITECH is meant to supplement and help accomplish the goals of HIPAA.  Finally, examine the authors conclusions in “How to Avoid a HIPAA Horror Story” and comment on whether or not you think HIPAAA and HITECH legislation places an appropriate or rather excessive regulatory burden on healthcare organizations today.