Protecting and Securing Health Data

Just as the prospect of widely sharing clinical data—through electronic health records and health information exchange—finally appears within reach, that very prospect has sent a current of urgency through the American public over the implications related to sharing sensitive medical details contained in electronic records. People's right to know how their health information is shared is a key requirement of the privacy and security protections necessary to achieve public trust in health information technology.

MITRE's Center for Transforming Health (CTH) is taking direct aim at the ability to manage patient consents and enforce privacy preferences. MITRE seeks to bridge the gap between concept and technological capabilities by investing in two initiatives. The first is a platform for handling patient consents on a national scale, accessible by both patients and record holders so they see a consistent view of patient preferences. The second is the technical means associated with capturing and storing patient preferences in a logical way through a single consent database.

In addition to applying technology to the issue of patient privacy, we draw upon MITRE's broad cybersecurity experience to provide guidance on safeguards and mitigation strategies to counter potential intruders seeking to steal identify information.

Featured Items

Articles and News

• Designing a 21st Century Federal Agency to Deliver High Value to the Public
• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Take Health IT Lead
• MITRE Transforms Electronic Health Records

Technical Papers and Presentations

• Meaningful Choice: Enabling Patients to Selectively Manage Access to their Health Records
• Privacy: Accounting for Disclosures of Protected Health Information

Research

• Enforceable Specification of Privacy (ESP)
• Data Reuse Agreements: Patient Consent To Share Clinical Data
• Automating Fact Extraction from Medical Records
• Measuring Risk and Information Preservation: New Metrics for De-identification of Unstructured Text

The Center for Transforming Health is taking direct aim at the ability to manage patient consents and enforce privacy preferences.