The Future of Health Care

October 5, 2016 The Future of Health Care Privacy Elena and Miles Zaremski Law-Medicine Forum Case Western Reserve University School of Law Data has never been more important for the health care industry. New ways of reaching patients, methods for combining and analyzing data and new devices and applications never before thought possible all give us unprecedented opportunities to improve the health of the population. At the same time, our existing privacy rules, primarily those stemming from the HIPAA statute, focused on somewhat outdated system where only doctors, hospitals and health insurers provided useful data. These rules have worked – for the most part – but present increasing challenges as individuals assert their privacy rights and industry and government seek more opportunities to explore how patient data can improve our health care system. This session will assess today’s baseline for privacy in the health care industry, discussing how the existing rules benefit (or hinder) health care providers, researchers, patients and others in improving the healthcare system. We will explore how the health care system is changing, with a new focus on patient engagement and a broad variety of new kinds of health care programs and, in that context, will explore the growing gaps in our healthcare privacy structure. We then will explore where our laws and regulations likely will need to evolve and expand in the years ahead, with an eye towards ensuring that all elements of the healthcare system can make their case on the best means of protecting privacy while still operating an effective and efficient health care system