Personal Health Information among Competing Public Goods: Can American Public Policy Find a Better balance among Individual Freedom, Health, Privacy, & Research?

Today, federal public policy forces personal privacy through public mandate over a person’s capacity and right to choose a unique personal health identifier to better protect both privacy and personal safety within health care environments as well as an individual’s altruistic interest in contributing personal health data including genetic information for biomedical and health research. The presentation will review past and current policies with respect to protection of personal health information, evolving concepts of privacy, current evidence regarding patient trust in their health care providers, and the negative impact of current policy on personal privacy as well as legitimate biomedical and health research. The regulatory policies of a few other developed economies offers valuable options.

Speaker Bios

Don Detmer, MD, MA, is Professor Emeritus and Professor of Medical Education at the University of Virginia. From 1999-2003 he was Gillings Professor of Health Management at Cambridge University. He currently is serving as Senior Advisor to the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), Co-chair of the Blue Ridge Academic Health Group, and Chair of MedBiquitous. Dr. Detmer is a member of the Institute of Medicine, a lifetime Associate of the National Academies, and a fellow of AAAS, American College of Medical Informatics, ACS, and ACSM (emeritus). Among his past leadership positions, he is the immediate past President and CEO of AMIA, past chairman of the IOM’s Board on Health Care Services, the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, and the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine. He chaired the 1991 IOM study on Computer-based Patient Records, and contributed to IOM Reports, To Error is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm. He has been a consultant to the government of England and the Hospital Authority of Hong Kong, and many agencies of the U.S. Government. Dr. Detmer’s research interests include national and international health information policy, quality improvement, administrative medicine, vascular surgery, sports medicine, education of clinician-executives and informaticians, and leadership of academic health sciences centers.

Date:
Haut-parleurs:
Don Detmer
Affiliation:
University of Virginia