A WWW Implementation of National Recommendations for Protecting Electronic Health Information
- Affiliations of the authors: Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Center for Clinical Computing, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA (JDH, DR, CS); Laboratory for Computer Science, MIT, Cambridge, MA (PS)
- Correspondence and reprints: John D. Halamka MD, Center for Clinical Computing, 350 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115. E-mail: jhalamka{at}bidmc.harvard.edu
- Received 22 May 1997
- Accepted 14 July 1997
Abstract
In March of 1997, the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences issued the report, “For the Record: Protecting Electronic Health Information.” Concluding that the current practices at the majority of health care facilities in the United States are insufficient, the Council delineated both technical and organizational approaches to protecting electronic health information. The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center recently implemented a proof-of-concept, Web-based, cross-institutional medical record, CareWeb, which incorporates the NRC security and confidentiality recommendations. We report on our WWW implementation of the NRC recommendations and an initial evaluation of the balance between ease of use and confidentiality.
Footnotes
-
Funded in part by a cooperative agreement with the Agency for Health Care and Research and the National Library of Medicine Grant Sharing Paperless Records among Networks of Providers (U01-08749), and the Douglas Porter Fellowship, Center for Clinical Computing, Harvard Medical School.
