The COVID-19 crisis is demonstrating the potential of digital health technology to manage some of our greatest public health challenges. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has issued a call to action for technology companies to help the science community answer high-priority scientific questions related to COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control … Continue Reading
On February 10, 2020, the UK Government’s Committee on Standards in Public Life* (the “Committee”) published its Report on Artificial Intelligence and Public Standards (the “Report”). The Report examines potential opportunities and hurdles in the deployment of AI in the public sector, including how such deployment may implicate the “Seven Principles of Public Life” applicable to … Continue Reading
In this final instalment of our series of blogs on the European Commission’s plans for AI and data, announced on 19 February 2020, we discuss some potential effects on companies in the digital health sector. As discussed in our previous blog posts (here, here and here), the papers published by the European Commission cover broad … Continue Reading
On 19 February 2020, the new European Commission published two Communications relating to its five-year digital strategy: one on shaping Europe’s digital future, and one on its European strategy for data (the Commission also published a white paper proposing its strategy on AI; see our previous blogs here and here). In both Communications, the Commission … Continue Reading
The Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London has published a report called “NHS data: Maximising its impact on the health and wealth of the United Kingdom” (the “Report”).[1] The Report begins from the premise that the knowledge gleaned from the combination of patient health data and “big data” technologies has incredible potential … Continue Reading
The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) has issued and is consulting on draft guidance about explaining decisions made by AI. The ICO prepared the guidance with The Alan Turing Institute, which is the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence. Among other things, the guidance sets out key principles to follow and steps to take … Continue Reading
Following on from the Evidence Standards Framework for DHTs published in December 2018 (the Original Standards, as reported in our previous blog post, here), the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recently published a newly updated version of the standards (the Updated Standards, available here). The Updated Standards were produced following feedback … Continue Reading
On 15 February 2019, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and Heads of Medicines Agencies (HMA) published their Joint Big Data Taskforce’s summary report (available here) setting out recommendations for understanding the acceptability of evidence derived from ‘big data’ in support of the evaluation and supervision of medicines by regulators. The Taskforce has sought to clarify … Continue Reading
The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has recently published an evidence standards framework for DHTs (the Standards), available here. It did so through a working group led by NHS England, but supported by representatives from Public Health England, MedCity and DigitalHealth.London. The Standards cover DHTs, such as apps, programs and software … Continue Reading
On 8 October, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) published a report (available here) setting out the progress it has made towards applying a common data model (CDM) in Europe. The EMA defines a CDM as “a mechanism by which raw data are standardized to a common structure, format and terminology independently from any particular study … Continue Reading
Designing data-driven products and services in compliance with privacy requirements can be a challenging process. Technological innovation enables novel uses of personal data, and companies designing new data-driven products must navigate new, untested, and sometimes unclear requirements of privacy laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These challenges are often particularly acute for companies … Continue Reading
On 5 September, in response to the opportunities presented by data-driven innovations, apps, clinician decision support tools, electronic health care records and advances in technology such as artificial intelligence, the UK Government published a draft “Initial code of conduct for data-driven health and care technology” (Code) for consultation. The Code is designed to be supplementary … Continue Reading
On 1 May, 2018 the Centre for Policy Studies (the “CPS”) published its latest paper on the UK’s National Health Service (the “NHS”) entitled “Powerful Patients, Paperless Systems: How New Technology Can Renew The NHS” (the “Paper”). The Paper advocates a “digital first NHS” that adopts a paperless system and enables patients to take full … Continue Reading
Although the National Cybersecurity Awareness Month of October has come to a close, it is not too late for corporate counsel and risk managers to be thinking about cyber-risk insurance — an increasingly essential tool in the enterprise risk management toolkit. But a prospective policyholder purchasing cyber insurance for the first time may be hard … Continue Reading
In the second of a three-part series, Covington’s global cross-practice Digital Health team considers some additional key questions that companies across the life sciences, technology, and communications industries should be asking as they seek to fit together the regulatory and commercial pieces of the complex digital health puzzle. Key Commercial Questions When Contracting for Digital … Continue Reading
On August 30, the UK government published a report by Professor Sir John Bell of Oxford University providing a number of recommendations to government to ensure the long term success of the life sciences sector in the UK (Life Sciences Industry Strategy). This blog post summarises the key recommendations and observations made from a digital … Continue Reading
On May 11, 2017, the European Cloud in Health Advisory Council (ECHAC) – a group of healthcare organizations, technology companies and patient representatives – launched its second whitepaper focused on use of data to improve health outcomes and delivery of care. ECHAC launched the whitepaper at an eHealth Week 2017 session attended by ECHAC participants and … Continue Reading
The UK Government has opened a consultation, running until September 7, 2016, regarding how UK National Health Service (NHS) patient data should be safeguarded, and how it could be used for purposes other than direct care (e.g. scientific research). The consultation comes after two parallel-track reviews of information governance and data security arrangements in the … Continue Reading
Over the past five years, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) has used “big data” and predictive analytics approaches to fight fraud, waste, and abuse in the Medicare fee-for-service program. According to a recent post on the official CMS blog, the Fraud Prevention System’s “big data” effort has given CMS the ability to … Continue Reading
Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that a number of large health care companies and providers had “agreed to implement three core commitments” to improve access to electronic health records (EHR). HHS touted the commitments as a significant step toward increased EHR interoperability.… Continue Reading
On October 20, 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) released its top ten Regulatory Science Priorities for FY 2016 to facilitate improvements in the safety and effectiveness of medical devices and accelerate innovation. Several of the priorities would harness health information technology or health data to … Continue Reading
Earlier today, on the InsidePrivacy blog, our colleagues Mark Young and Phil Bradley-Schmieg posted a summary of the UK government’s announcement of a new national service providing expert cybersecurity advice to entities within the National Health Service (NHS) and the UK’s broader healthcare system. The project, called CareCERT (Care Computing Emergency Response Team), is aiming for a … Continue Reading
Last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) made additional Medicare data publicly available and expanded the permissible uses of other data. For the third consecutive year, CMS released hospital-specific data on inpatient and outpatient charges, Medicare payments, and utilization for common Medicare procedures. CMS also released similar data on physicians and other … Continue Reading
Last week, as part of our Life Sciences Essentials series, Covington hosted a webinar discussion of issues facing life sciences companies as they increasingly utilize cloud services to collect, aggregate, store and process data. The webinar is available here, and the slides can be viewed here. Panelists and topics included: Anna Kraus — HIPAA and … Continue Reading
