Obama threw a bone to the software companies by creating HIPAA AND the electronic medical record law. HIPAA prevents people from sharing data on a platform that is not CCHIT compliant. The law mandating EMR (or else doctors and hospitals get paid less if they cannot show they are using it) is a big profit center for software companies. It’s not the medical industry driving this data jail, it’s the software companies. It goes all the way back to Microsoft who showed that you can become a trillionaire if you create a product that requires ‘licensed specialists’ to service and maintain.
To be pedantic, HIPAA was signed into law in 1996. Obama obviously had nothing to do with that. Technically the HITECH act was signed into law by Obama, in Feb 2009. But that was only a few weeks after he took office.
The Affortable Care Act is largely thanks to Obama. And it did add new regulations related to HIPAA and HITECH. But the core principals that you mentioned were already tehre.
Just adding some links to support the above comment - HITEC was part of the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" [1] following Hurricane Sandy. Additional clarifications for internet-enabled devices was released by the FDA in early 2015. [2]
The importance of privacy of medical information goes all the way back to the Hippocratic oath, so no, it IS physicians and patients themselves driving concerns about privacy.
I guess I got confused about the details of all the superfluous legislation that our Congress is passing under the pressure from lobbyists...
Before the internet, we had concerns about privacy. Records were locked away. But a physician could get records at the hospital to care for the patients (who, by the way, stayed in the hospital until they were well - none of this 'profit seeking' length of stay limit).
Release of records to the OUTSIDE required a letter from the patient or a court of law. Now that electronic medical records have supplanted the old system, we are all worried about privacy because the new tech. Can you honestly say that electronic medical records have turned out to be a good thing for patients?
I offer patients a USB stick with all their data for $10. And they would not have to type a thing- I already do all of the data entry as part of my encounter with them. 9 out of ten patients choose not to buy it. ( A telling fact is that if I offer it for free, they say they would take it) A simple usb stick with all your files and meds would save so much hassle. Security? Zip up the data with a password, use true crypt, there are so many options for protection. But the main advantage is that the data will only be on the stick and not on the net. So who REALLY benefits by having info about YOUR body on the cloud?
You'd think people would keep a record on their smartphones-there are so many apps for this. But instead, when I visit patients in the hospital, they are playing temple run or candy crush.
Privacy is not really the issue. It is a straw man for hiding other agendas
