The Department of Health and Human Services has announced that 22 states and territories have entered subcontracts with RTI International, Inc., a private, not-for-profit corporation, to address privacy and security policy questions affecting interoperable health information exchange. Additional states are expected to sign subcontracts within the next two weeks. ONC and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality jointly manage and fund AHRQ’s contract with RTI for this work.
Subcontractors will be working with healthcare professionals, patients, and others to address privacy and security issues and proposing solutions, including identifying variations in privacy and security practices and laws affecting electronic clinical health information exchange; developing best practices and proposed solutions to address identified challenges; and increasing expertise about health information privacy and security protection in communities. The states will also work to develop implementation plans for future health information exchange activities. The solutions that are ultimately crafted will provide a foundation for future work by ONC and AHRQ and facilitate health information exchange across states.
