David Harlow | | SPM Blog

The Precision Medicine Initiative, Patients’ Health Data Rights and You

By David Harlow | February 27, 2016

The recent Precision Medicine Initiative Summit at the White House saw dozens of private entities committing to join with the administration in supercharging the effort to enroll one million patients into precision medicine research programs, collecting and securely...

Individuals’ Rights to Their Health Information: The Federales Awaken

By David Harlow | January 12, 2016

A long time ago (in internet years), the original HIPAA regulations were promulgated. (The final Privacy Rule was published in 2000.) They’ve been tweaked and updated over the years, most notably in the “mega-reg” promulgated a few years back in...

On Making Patient Reviews of Physicians More Useful

By David Harlow | June 27, 2015

I recently hosted a Google Hangout on Air entitled Patient Reviews of Physicians: The Wisdom of the Crowd? (presented by The Harlow Group LLC in association with The Society for Participatory Medicine). I spoke with Niam Yaraghi (Center for Technology Innovation, The...

Tune in for Patient Reviews of Physicians: The Wisdom of the Crowd?

By David Harlow | June 20, 2015

Patient Reviews of Physicians: The Wisdom of the Crowd? Google Hangout On Air Hosted by David Harlow with Niam Yaraghi and Casey Quinlan Wed, Jun 24, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM ET Presented by David Harlow (aka HealthBlawg) in association with The Society for...

Add Your Voice: Meaningful Use Regulations Mustn’t Leave Patient Engagement in the Dust

By David Harlow | May 20, 2015

There are two sets of Meaningful Use draft regulations out for comment at present: (1) Proposed revisions to Meaningful Use Stage 2 (“MU2”), with comments due June 15 and (2) Proposed Meaningful Use Stage 3 (“MU3”) regulations, to be effective in 2017 at the earliest....

The Doctor as Patient

By David Harlow | June 23, 2014

Charlotte Yeh is the Chief Medical Officer of AARP Services, and has had a long career in government and as a practicing emergency physician. (Our paths first crossed years ago when we were both working on pre-hospital care reform in Massachusetts.) She wrote a piece...

The Iceberg Waiting for Your Health Care Data

By David Harlow | May 1, 2014

The Heartbleed web security exploit was first publicized several weeks ago. In the time since then, numerous web-based services have let their users know (some more clearly than others) whether and how their data security was compromised by this OpenSSL flaw that has...

New paradigm in data sharing and analysis?

By David Harlow | March 27, 2014

A Perspectives piece I wrote was published this week by iHealthBeat – Unlocking the Power of Health Data. In it I argue for patient-controlled sharing of rich data, as opposed to HIPAA-regulated stripping of identifiers in order to eliminate the risk to patient...

Patients to Have Right to Access Lab Test Result Data – Finally!

By David Harlow | February 4, 2014

The lab test result data access rule is finally final. See the HHS presser and the final rule, which is scheduled to be published on Thursday. What does this mean? In a nutshell, patients in all 50 states are now guaranteed the right to access the results of tests...

Rainbow Button – 2013 Edition

By David Harlow | October 14, 2013

Meaningful Use Stage 2 includes the requirement that health care providers with EHRs seeking Meaningful Use incentive dollars demonstrate that 5% of patients actually view, download or transmit their data. The HIPAA/HITECH Omnibus Rule, which is now fully in effect...