Top News
Department of Justice Releases ANPRM: Provisions Regarding Access to Americans' Bulk Sensitive Personal Data and Government-Related Data by Countries of Concern
The National Security Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a proposed rule open to comment reviewing what are the necessary measures to protect access of Americans’ sensitive data from countries of concern. This Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) follows an Executive Order issued from President Biden.
The DOJ is tasked with figuring out “specific, carefully calibrated actions to minimize the risks associated with access to Americans' bulk sensitive personal data by countries of concern”. The DOJ is considering a program that would identify prohibited transactions and restricted transactions to mitigate the risk of access to sensitive data. This program would define six categories of bulk U.S. sensitive personal data for transactions, including personal health data, biometric identifiers, and human genomic data.
The ANPRM is seeking comment on several questions around the proposed definitions, thresholds, and framework. One question AMIA could assist in is if any unintended consequences could result from the definitions by DOJ, in particular what extent would DOJ’s approach affect individuals’ rights to share their own health data.
Comments to the ANPRM are due April 19.
Congress
Proposed Senate Finance Committee Legislation on AI in Health Care
The Senate Finance Committee could be producing bills/framework for AI in health care as early as the end of March or April. Senator Mike Rounds (Rep. – South Dakota) proposed the Senate Finance Committee could tap the Medicare and Medicaid program to fund AI innovations in health care being one of the first ideas to come from the forums Senate held regarding AI at the end of last year. Senator Rounds also spoke on privacy protections for personal health data as a prerequisite for introducing any legislation.
Regulatory
CHAI Announces CEO and Board of Directors
Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) is officially designated as a nonprofit organization with over 1300 member organizations to date. Dr. Brian S. Anderson, Chief Digital Health Physician at MITRE, is named CHAI’s first CEO. The organization also appointed nine Board of Directors with two Federal Liaisons, Troy Tazbaz, Director for the FDA Digital Health Center of Excellence and Micky Tripathi, PhD, National Coordinator for HHS Health Information Technology. CHAI also created six advisory boards including a Government Advisory Board with representation from Veterans Health Administration, FDA, ONC, CMS, Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, CDC, HHS OCR, and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. One of CHAI’s first tasks is creating new guidelines for trustworthy and effective AI in health care introducing assurance labs.
Read the official announcement by CHAI.
ICYMI
AMIA Win! AHRQ Releases Technical Brief on Documentation Burden for Comment
Through the hard work by members of the AMIA 25x5 Task Force, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) Effective Health Care Program released a technical brief on documentation burden describing the concept and how it is measured. AHRQ has identified 11 outcome measures, how the measures were developed and applied, and the physician perspective on documentation burden. This is a big win for the 25x5 Task Force because it shows federal funding toward understanding documentation burden and the effects on physicians.
Read the technical brief and provide comments by March 15.
Match IT Act Introduced in the House
On February 15, The Patient Matching and Transparency in Certified Health IT (Match IT) Act of 2024 was introduced in the House of Representatives by Reps. Mike Kelly (Pennsylvania District 16) and Bill Foster (Illinois District 11). Through the Patient ID Now coalition, the Match IT Act was authored to improve patient matching and transparency, decrease patient and health system costs, and increase patient privacy and safety. As a member of Patient ID Now, AMIA applauds the great work by the coalition and will continue to support strategies for addressing patient identification.
AMIA Urges Congress to Act on Telehealth
Coordinated by the Alliance for Connected Care, AMIA, and 200-plus organizations, submitted a letter to urge Congress to make permanent important telehealth flexibilities granted during the pandemic to continue supporting access to care for millions of Americans.
Read the letter to Congressional Leadership.
Around the World
- NLM Office Hours for the Dataset Catalog Thursday, April 11, at 2:00 p.m. ET.
- Register for the NLM Dataset Catalog Office Hours.
- Email questions in advance of the office hours with the subject line “NLM Office Hours” to NLMTrainers@nih.gov.
- ONC Health IT Certification Roundtable Wednesday, March 27, at 12:00 p.m. ET.
- AHRQ National Advisory Council Meeting Thursday, March 14, at 11:15 a.m. ET.
- ONC Welcomes New Chief Nursing Officer - Health IT Buzz; ONC
- Unveiling a Milestone: Introducing the NLM User Services and Collection Division – NLM Musings from the Mezzanine; NIH
- CMS Roundup for March 8, 2024; CMS
AMIA’s Washington Download is your source for health informatics policy news and information from around the Beltway, covering action from the Hill, the Administration, and important AMIA collaborators.