Protecting Health Information Privacy And Safety On The Internet: United States Ehealth Systems And Legal Perspectives

This paper focuses on the emerging security issues in the United States under the new 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. To develop a reliable security model, privacy rights and security for eHealth must be integrated into a comprehensive legal and security framework that addresses the rights and obligations of the healthcare provider, including physicians, hospitals and healthcare enterprises, the patient, medical and cybersecurity researchers, and Internet service providers. Both Congress and the Executive Branch are aware of the need to integrate privacy into cybersecurity policy. Further collaborative research across federal and state government agencies, industry and academia is crucial to the development of security models that will not only protect individual rights, but will meet the future challenges essential to the delivery of exceptional medical and healthcare treatment. This paper provides: (1) an overview of the legal environment of eHealth; (2) the main mechanisms used for data protection; and (3) a comparative analysis of their advantages and limitations for implementation in distributed healthcare IT systems.