Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Patient Privacy Continues To Be A Priority When Working On Increasing Access To Health Data, Federal Official Says
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology is working with Congress and the White House on ways to help patients understand when their health data is being used for secondary purposes. ...Patient privacy has been a particular point of concern for hospital groups as healthcare agencies have ramped up interest in using apps to connect patients with their health data. Application programming interfaces that connect IT systems with third-party apps were key parts of the ONC's and the CMS' companion interoperability proposals released in February. (Cohen, 8/21)
ONC officials are consulting with White House officials and members of Congress to help structure the evolving privacy landscape for the handling of patient data by apps, agency chief Don Rucker said Wednesday. But it appears many questions remain just that. (Ravindranath, 8/21)
Amid a growing shortfall of qualified nurses in the U.K., students and professors at Imperial College London are developing a robot with dexterous 3D-printed fingers to assist the elderly or physically-challenged. A modified version of a robot nicknamed Baxter, the machine has two mechanical arms, an animated face, as well as sensors to help it analyze patterns and detect if a human user is struggling to lift or move a limb. (Ingersoll, 8/22)
About two years ago, Simon Smith started counting the startups trying to bring artificial intelligence to drug development. Smith, an AI startup executive himself, found about 30 of them. Now? His tally is up to 148. Smith’s list is incomplete — some companies are still in stealth mode, and others are hard to classify because they straddle the line between AI and traditional biotech — but its rapid growth is a clear sign of an industry on the rise. (Robbins, 8/22)
