CAREER: Health Information Privacy Protection: System and Social Aspects

提供或接受医疗护理的经历具有非常个人的层面。 希波克拉底誓言：“无论我在与人交往的过程中看到或听到什么，如果它不应该在国外发表，我将永远不会泄露，将这些事情视为神圣的秘密。 1996年的健康保险携带和责任法案（HIPAA）要求政府发布法规保护健康信息的隐私。这样的法规赋予消费者查看、复制和更正自己的健康信息的权利，以及被告知他们的健康信息将如何被使用和共享的权利。它还对那些持有健康信息的人施加了新的限制。然而，仅仅有法律的保护是不够的，因为它只能在问题发生后，在损害已经造成的情况下才能适用。此外，执法通常是昂贵、缓慢和复杂的。 该项目的目标是设计一个全面的技术基础设施，支持健康信息隐私保护的实施。 数据保护和隐私问题是在技术层面上解决的，因此可以提前防止任何违反隐私政策的行为，而不是在发生后进行纠正。 该项目的目的是证明，健康信息隐私解决方案可以被设计为在不给社会带来不必要的财政负担或更糟的情况下，以牺牲公共安全的方式来获得有益的利益。

The experience of providing or receiving medical care has a verypersonal dimension. Quoted from the Hippocratic oath:"Whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my dealings withmen, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will neverdivulge, holding such things to be holy secrets". The 1996Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)required the Administration to issue regulations protecting theprivacy of health information. Such a regulation gives consumersthe right to see, copy, and correct their own health informationand the right of being notified as to how their healthinformation is going to be used and shared. It also imposes newrestrictions on those who hold health information.However, legal protection alone is not enough as it can only beapplied after the problem has occurred, when the damage hasalready been done. Moreover, law enforcement is usuallyexpensive, slow, and complex. The goal of this project is todesign a comprehensive technical infrastructure that guaranteesthe enforcement of health information privacy protection. Theproblem of data protection and privacy is addressed on atechnical level, thus preventing any violation of a privacypolicy in advance rather than correcting it after it hasoccurred. The intend of the project is to demonstrate thathealth information privacy solutions can be designed to achievemeaningful benefits without penalizing society with unduefinancial burdens or worse, with the compromise of public safety.