Could HIPAA hamper research?

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: Up front: news, trends and analysis - Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

Experts say the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is making it more difficult for medical researchers to access large amounts of patient data, and some researchers fear that could jeopardize critical studies on drug safety, medical devices, and how to better predict and prevent diseases.

HIPAA, designed to protect individuals' personal medical information, explicitly outlines how medical records can be given to third parties and carries stiff penalties for violations. It was not intended to hamper academic medicine, but many say it may be doing just that. Major teaching hospitals like Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore have systems in place to manage the process of making medical data available for research under HIPAA, and some ongoing, large-scale research efforts rely on volunteer participants. But researchers are concerned about the fate of new studies that seek to examine large population samples. Such studies typically rely on data not only from teaching hospitals, but also from community hospitals, medical clinics, and other smaller facilities.

In an interview with Computer World, Dr. David Savitz, chair of the department of epidemiology at the University...