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Balancing Public Health And Privacy: Lessons From Digital Contact Tracing For Covid-19 Vaccination Tracking Efforts, Carmel Shachar
Balancing Public Health And Privacy: Lessons From Digital Contact Tracing For Covid-19 Vaccination Tracking Efforts, Carmel Shachar
Saint Louis University Law Journal
The COVID-19 pandemic has brough the tension between individual privacy and public health initiative to the fore, in part because many of the solutions to the challenges of the pandemic proposed are digital. The first year of the pandemic has revealed that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is both too restrictive of traditional public health activities but also underprotective of important categories of health data. The failure of digital contact tracing applications to make a difference in combatting the pandemic during its early stages also illustrates the tension between individual privacy and public health surveillance. In order to …
At A Covid Crossroads: Public Health, Patient Privacy, And Health Information Confidentiality, Stacey A. Tovino
At A Covid Crossroads: Public Health, Patient Privacy, And Health Information Confidentiality, Stacey A. Tovino
Saint Louis University Law Journal
This essay summarizes and assesses the various bulletins, guidance documents, and notices of enforcement discretion released by the federal Department of Health and Human Services regarding the application of the HIPAA Privacy Rule to the COVID-19 pandemic. Among other topics and actions, these authorities address the application of the HIPAA Privacy Rule to the use and disclosure of protected health information for public health activities, waive the application of certain HIPAA Privacy Rule requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic, and announce enforcement discretion regarding certain covered entities’ non-compliance with particular provisions within the HIPAA Privacy Rule. These authorities overwhelmingly, and appropriately, …