Thursday, March 15, 2012

Health-record Privacy Impeding Medical Research

Dribben, Melissa. "Health-record Privacy Impeding Medical Research." Philly.com, March 13, 2012.

From the article: "Kathryn Segesser says she believes the current thinking about eating disorders may be wrong. Segesser suspects that for centuries, anorexia and bulimia have afflicted both men and women. She would like to challenge the popular theory that blames modern cultural pressures and unrealistic images of beauty projected by lollipop-thin models. "I'm trying to see if, in the 18th century, people understood that there was some psychological reason that people decided not to eat," Segesser said. "It would help if I could look at case reports." But she can't. They have been sealed since 1996, when the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was signed into law to protect the privacy of personal health records."  Read more