Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., is pushing to tighten protections for health information gathered by wearable devices and mobile health apps, citing growing privacy concerns as the technology becomes more common, Politico reported Nov. 11.
Here are five things to know:
- Mr. Cassidy, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, introduced the Health Information Privacy Reform Act to address what he called a gap in federal law. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act does not cover data collected by consumer devices such as smartwatches, fitness trackers and health-monitoring rings.
- Under his bill, developers would be required to notify users that HIPAA does not apply to their data and provide an option to block data sharing.
- The legislation would also direct Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to commission a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine study on the ethics and implications of paying patients to share health data for research.
- The proposal touches on one of Mr. Kennedy’s priorities as Health secretary: encouraging personal responsibility in managing chronic disease. He has promoted lifestyle changes and wearable technology over pharmaceutical solutions such as weight-loss drugs. In June, he told lawmakers he wanted every American to wear a health-tracking device within four years.
- Mr. Cassidy’s measure follows other efforts to regulate emerging health technology. Senate Democrats have introduced legislation directing the Federal Trade Commission to examine how neural data — information that captures brain activity — is collected by wearables.
At the state level, lawmakers in Massachusetts, Illinois and Minnesota have advanced similar proposals this year.
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