Cloud
Subscribe to Cloud's Posts

Potential Applications of AI in Health Care

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers powerful new modalities for improving care delivery and access, harnessing previously untapped data, and reducing error and waste. As AI applications proliferate, health industry stakeholders are increasingly exploring how they might integrate these solutions to benefit their providers and patients. This article includes just a small sample of potential applications of AI to address a broad range of needs in healthcare care and life sciences.

To view the full article, “Potential Applications of AI in Healthcare,” click here.

For a deeper dive into the role of AI in healthcare and the board’s governance responsibility, read our June 2021 Health Law Connections article.




read more

Order now: The Law of Digital Health Book

Designed to provide business leaders and their key advisors with the knowledge and insight they need to grow and sustain successful digital health initiatives, we are pleased to present The Law of Digital Health, a new book edited and authored by McDermott’s team of distinguished digital health lawyers, and published by AHLA.

Visit www.mwe.com/lawofdigitalhealth to order this comprehensive legal and regulatory analysis, coupled with practical planning and implementation strategies. You can also download the Executive Summary and hear more about how Digital Health is quickly and dynamically changing the health care landscape.

Explore more!




read more

Digital Health Year in Review: 2017 Trends and Looking Ahead to 2018

Throughout 2017, the health care and life sciences industries experienced a widespread proliferation of digital health innovation that presents challenges to traditional notions of health care delivery and payment as well as product research, development and commercialization for both long-standing and new stakeholders. At the same time, lawmakers and regulators made meaningful progress toward modernizing the existing legal framework in a way that will both adequately protect patients and consumers and support and encourage continued innovation, but their efforts have not kept pace with what has become the light speed of innovation. As a result, some obstacles, misalignment and ambiguity remain.

We are pleased to bring you this review of key developments that shaped digital health in 2017, along with planning considerations and predictions for the digital health frontier in the year ahead.

Read the full Special Report.




read more

UK Government Issues Cybersecurity Guidance for Connected and Automated Vehicles

On 6 August 2017, the UK government released ‘The Key Principles of Vehicle Cyber Security for Connected and Automated Vehicles’, guidance aimed at ensuring minimum cybersecurity protections for consumers in the manufacture and operation of connected and automated vehicles.

Connected and automated vehicles fall into the category of so-called ‘smart cars’. Connected vehicles have gained, and will continue to gain, adoption in the market and, indeed, are expected to make up more than half of new vehicles by 2020. Such cars have the ability through the use of various technologies to communicate with the driver, other cars, application providers, traffic infrastructure and the Cloud. Automated vehicles, also known as autonomous vehicles, include self-driving features that allow the vehicle to control key functions–like observing the vehicle’s environment, steering, acceleration, parking, and lane changes–that traditionally have been performed by a human driver. Consumers in certain markets have been able to purchase vehicles with certain autonomous driving features for the past few years, and vehicle manufacturers have announced plans to enable vehicles to be fully self-driving under certain conditions, in the near future.

(more…)




read more

OCR Explains How Information Blocking Violates HIPAA

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently posted guidance (OCR guidance) clarifying that a business associate such as an information technology vendor generally may not block or terminate access by a covered entity customer to protected health information (PHI) maintained by the vendor on behalf of the customer. Such “information blocking” could occur, for example, during a contract dispute in which a vendor terminates customer access or activates a “kill switch” that renders an information system containing PHI inaccessible to the customer. Many information vendors have historically taken such an approach to commercial disputes.

Read full article here.




read more

Augmented Reality

If you haven’t heard about newest gaming craze yet, it’s based on what is called “augmented reality” (AR) and it could potentially impinge on your home life and workplace as such games allow users to “photograph” imaginary items overlaid with objects existing in the real world. An augmented reality game differs from “virtual reality” in that it mixes elements of the real world with avatars, made up creatures, fanciful landscapes and the like, rather than simply presenting a completely fictional scenario. Whether you play such games yourself or are merely existing in nearby surroundings, here are few things to think about as an active participant, and some tips regarding Intellectual Property and confidentiality issues that arise from others playing the game around you.

Augmented reality games are typically played on a smartphone app and some of them allow the user to capture images of the player’s experience and post it on social media, text it to friends or maintain it on the phone’s camera roll. However, special glasses could be used or other vehicles could deliver the augmented reality experience in different contexts—not just gaming. For example, technology in this area is rapidly advancing which will allow users to link up and “experience” things together way beyond what exists in the real world, i.e., in a “mixed world” experience, if you will. These joint holographic experiences are just one facet of the direction that augmented reality is taking.

As always, with new technological advancements, there are some caveats to using AR that you should be aware of.

Trademarks

If a company’s trademark is visible in the photo of your AR experience, you need to be mindful that you do not run afoul of trademark laws. For the same reasons that some trademarks are blurred out on TV shows, you should not be publishing such photos in any fashion that might draw negative attention from the trademark owner on social media accounts. Even if you are not selling competing goods, you could potentially be liable for trademark infringement. There is another, more important reason not to post such photos that is discussed below and can lead to a second cause of action against you arising from the same photo—the right of publicity, which is a personal right and is treated in vastly different ways in each state.

Right of Publicity

The Right of Publicity (ROP) protects everyone from misappropriation of his/her name, likeness, voice, image or other recognizable element of personal identity. It is protected by state law and many states vary greatly in their treatment of ROP. For example, some states protect a person’s ROP post-mortem, whereas others have no protection whatsoever. Due to the ease with which still or moving images can be reproduced and posted on the Internet, it is critical that you consider your postings from a ROP standpoint before you upload that image to a social media account. For instance, if your photo features your best friend taken in a shared AR experience, she may not object [...]

Continue Reading




read more

China Released the Latest Classification Catalogue of Telecommunications Services (2015 Revision)

On December 28, 2015, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China released the newly revised Classification Catalogue of Telecommunications Services, which is due to take effect as of March 1st, 2016. This round of revision has long been awaited since its last amendment in 2003, and is expected to reflect the advancement and emergence of new technologies and business models in the telecommunication field as well as to help keep new telecommunication business models under the regulatory radar.

 

Read the full China Law Alert.




read more

National Roadmap for Health Data Sharing: FTC Advocates Preservation of Privacy and Competition

On April 1, 2015, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), which assists with the coordination of federal policy on data sharing objectives and standards, issued its Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap and requested comments.  The Roadmap seeks to lay out a framework for developing and implementing interoperable health information systems that will allow for the freer flow of health-related data by and among providers and patients.  The use of technology to capture and understand health-related information and the strategic sharing of information between health industry stakeholders and its use is widely recognized as critical to support patient engagement, improve quality outcomes and lower health care costs.

On April 3, 2015, the Federal Trade Commission issued coordinated comments from its Office of Policy Planning, Bureau of Competition, Bureau of Consumer Protection and Bureau of Economics.  The FTC has a broad, dual mission to protect consumers and promote competition, in part, by preventing business practices that are anticompetitive or deceptive or unfair to consumers.  This includes business practices that relate to consumer privacy and data security.  Notably, the FTC’s comments on the Roadmap draw from both its pro-competitive experience and its privacy and security protection perspective, and therefore offer insights into the FTC’s assessment of interoperability from a variety of consumer protection vantage points.

The FTC agreed that ONC’s Roadmap has the potential to benefit both patients and providers by “facilitating innovation and fostering competition in health IT and health care services markets” – lowering health care costs, improving population health management and empowering consumers through easier access to their personal information.  The concepts advanced in the Roadmap, however, if not carefully implemented, can also have a negative effect on competition for health care technology services.  The FTC comments are intended to guide ONC’s implementation with respect to: (1) creating a business and regulatory environment that encourages interoperability, (2) shared governance mechanisms that enable interoperability, and (3) advancing technical standards.

Taking each of these aspects in turn, creating a business and regulatory environment that encourages interoperability is important because, if left unattended, the marketplace may be resistant to interoperability.  For example, health care providers may resist interoperability because it would make switching providers easier and IT vendors may see interoperability as a threat to customer-allegiance.  The FTC suggests that the federal government, as a major payer, work to align economic incentives to create greater demand among providers for interoperability.

With respect to shared governance mechanisms, the FTC notes that coordinated efforts among competitors may have the effect of suppressing competition.  The FTC identifies several examples of anticompetitive conduct in standard setting efforts for ONC’s consideration as it considers how to implement the Roadmap.

Finally, in advancing core technical standards, the FTC advised ONC to consider how standardization could affect competition by (1) limiting competition between technologies, (2) facilitating customer lock-in, (3) reducing competition between standards, and (4) impacting the method for selecting standards.

As part of its mission to protect consumers, the FTC focuses its privacy and security [...]

Continue Reading




read more

Any Progress? The Draft Data Protection Regulation Celebrates its Third Anniversary

On the third anniversary of the EU Commission’s proposed new data protection regime, the UK ICO has published its thoughts on where the new regime stands. The message is mixed: progress in some areas but nothing definitive, and no real clarity as to when the new regime may come into force.

The legislative process involves the agreement of the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe (representing the governments of the member states). So far the European Parliament has agreed its amendments to the Commission’s proposal and we are still waiting for the Council to agree it’s amendments before all three come together and try and find a mutually agreeable position.

The Council is guided by the mantra “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”, and so even though there has been progress with the Council reaching “partial general agreement” on international transfers, risk-based obligations on controllers and processors, and the provisions relating to specific data processing situations such as research and an approach agreed on the one-stop shop principle (allowing those operating in multiple states to appointed and deal with a single authority), this progress means nothing until there is final agreement on everything. At this stage that means all informal agreements remain open to renegotiation.

It is noted that Latvia holds the presidency of the Council until June 2015. The Latvians have already noted that Anydata protection reform remains a key priority but progress has been slow and time may be against them. Where Latvia fails, Luxembourg will hopefully succeed as it takes up the presidency from June.

The ICO is urging all stakeholders to push on with the reform, although they see the proposed timetable of completion of the trilogue process by the end of 2015 as being optimistic. Instead a more reasonable timetable may be a final agreement by mid-2016 with the new regime up and running in 2018.




read more

Privacy and Data Protection: 2014 Year in Review

In 2014, regulators around the globe issued guidelines, legislation and penalties in an effort to enhance security and control within the ever-shifting field of privacy and data protection. The Federal Trade Commission confirmed its expanded reach in the United States, and Canada’s far-reaching anti-spam legislation takes full effect imminently. As European authorities grappled with the draft data protection regulation and the “right to be forgotten,” the African Union adopted the Convention on Cybersecurity and Personal Data, and China improved the security of individuals’ information in several key areas. Meanwhile, Latin America’s patchwork of data privacy laws continues to evolve as foreign business increases.

This report furnishes in-house counsel and others responsible for privacy and data protection with an overview of key action points based on these and other 2014 developments, along with advance notice of potential trends in 2015. McDermott will continue to report on future updates, so check back with us regularly.

Read the full report here.




read more

STAY CONNECTED

TOPICS

ARCHIVES

2021 Chambers USA top ranked firm
LEgal 500 EMEA top tier firm 2021
U.S. News Law Firm of the Year 2022 Health Care Law