Some Ideas Governing Patient Data Stewardship by Hospitals

A recent kerfuffle atMemorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center launched a discussion about whether MSK acted judiciously by providing a for-profit, startup company exclusive access to its hospital surgical pathology imaging data as well as associated textual records (see:Controversy at MSK Cancer Center Regarding the Pathology Archive and Database;Controversy Surrounding Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Paige.AI Highlights Risks of Data Sharing and Monetization in Anatomic Pathology). The larger issue here is who"owns" or"controls" hospital data. These questions were addressed in a recent article, a passage from which relating to the use of patient data is provided below (see: Who should profit from the sale of patient data?):With one exception, every U.S. state either recognizes medical providers as the owners of medical data or do not have any laws to confer specific ownership or property right to medical records. Only New Hampshire explicitly grants ownership of data to patients. Regardless of state law, I believe that we must abandon the discussion of data ownership and instead focus on data stewardship. The ownership of data, whether granted to patients or to providers, will have dangerous unintended consequences....A model of data stewardship alleviates these concerns.Once a party takes the stewardship of data, they have to act according to a set of rules which guarantee the benefits of all other parties. Despite some notable...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Lab Information Lab Regulation Lab Standards Medical Consumerism Medical Ethics Medicolegal Issues Source Type: blogs