Beyond the HIPAA Privacy Rule Enhancing Privacy Improving Health Through Research

This report contains the findings of a committee charged with reviewing the HIPAA privacy rule and its impact on health research. The committee found that the rule does not adequately protect the privacy of people’s personal health information and hinders important health research. It recommends that Congress authorize the development of an entirely new approach to protecting personal health information in research that applies privacy, data security, and accountability standards uniformly to information used in all health-related research regardless of who funds or conducts it.