Patient Health Data Privacy

How private is medical and health data? Well-known cases of lost, stolen, or hacked computers or storage devices; reported snooping into celebrity data, or even that of neighbors or divorced spouses; and other computer breaches involving health records, are disturbing news. This review makes three contributions. First, it addresses multiple issues and regulatory domains. Second, it therefore begins to describe a fuller legal landscape than the usual focus on one specific issue. Lastly, it takes a more patient-centric approach because more serious consideration of how to weigh conflicting needs, values, and theories is difficult without public, and hence legislative and regulatory, understanding. Data privacy threats and solutions come from both the public and private sectors.