Adrian Gropper Calls for "HIE of One" to Protect Patient Privacy

Leonard Kish of HealthIT TV talks with patient privacy advocate and expert, Dr. Adrian Gropper, about his work in providing better patient control over their health data and the role of agency, identity and existing internet tools to fulfill better patient control. Dr. Gropper's take on The Pledge for interoperability and patient access: it's a deflection to try to skirt around government action.

According to Gropper, who was interviewed during the HIMSS16 conference, the patients' right of consent around their data has been seen as too risky, but the converse is now that there is zero accountability and massive amounts of data are being sold on the black market. Providing better consent mechanisms is almost certainly part of the story. It's better than no consent and no control.

We may need Congressional action to change how consent and data blocking and managing patient consent, although he's not certain it will happen.

Gropper is more hopeful about new technologies enabling better control with the Federal Health IT architecture to take a leadership position to allow for better patient control, and he's pushing from both the policy and technology angles with Patient Privacy Rights.

The simple solution is the "power to delegate" our health information via APIs and his emerging project, HIE of One, a reference implementation using modern standards to show it can be done with a right of access.