Cybersecurity

Technology companies widely use open source software (“OSS”), which carries with it many potential benefits.  It can reduce the time and cost of development, and, to the extent that the code has been vetted by numerous other developers, may contain fewer bugs.  OSS can also reduce dependency upon third party vendors and associated pricing risks.

In the healthcare space in particular, OSS has been cited as one potential way to reduce the cost of developing and delivering digital care solutions, which in turn may mean improved access to or quality of treatment for underserved populations.[1] And indeed, OSS is frequently used in healthcare IT.  In fact, the EHR system for veterans, VistA, is available as open source code[2] and now deployed by a range of healthcare organizations.[3]

Of course, as with any third party technology, when incorporating OSS into a technology, it is important to carefully consider the soundness and security of the OSS code, as well as the legal terms on which the code is made available.  Below we highlight some key considerations for digital health ventures that either currently do or wish to use OSS for their technology: (1) security, (2) how license terms may impact the ability to commercialize the technology, and (3) how the use of OSS may impact corporate transactions, such as mergers and acquisitions.Continue Reading Open Source Considerations for Digital Health Ventures

In the third installment of our series, Covington’s global cross-practice Digital Health team considers some additional key questions about Artificial Intelligence (AI), data privacy, and cybersecurity that companies across the life sciences and technology sectors should be asking to address the regulatory and commercial pieces of the complex digital health…
Continue Reading Digital Health Checkup (Part Three): Key Questions About AI, Data Privacy, and Cybersecurity

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 put to understand what coverage the insurer is selling and whether that coverage is a proper fit for its own risk profile. With little standardization among cyber policies’ wordings, confusing labels for their covered perils, and little interpretive guidance from case law to date, a cyber insurance buyer trying to evaluate a new proposed policy may hardly know where to focus first.

After pursuing coverage for historically major cyber breaches and analyzing scores of cyber insurance forms over the past 15 years, we suggest the following issues as a starting point for any cyber policy review:
Continue Reading Top Tips and Traps for Cyber Insurance Buyers

Digital Health

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…

Continue Reading Digital Health Checkup (Part Two): Key Commercial Questions When Contracting for Digital Health Solutions

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently published guidance on HIPAA requirements governing the use of cloud computing entities, specifically cloud services providers (CSPs).

In this guidance, HHS explains that CSPs that create, receive, maintain, or transmit protected health information (PHI) on behalf of a covered entity or…
Continue Reading HHS Issues Guidance on HIPAA and Cloud Providers

Earlier this week the Government Accountability Office released a report critiquing the U.S. Department of Health and Humana Services’ (HHS) oversight of and guidance related to health information security and privacy. (The report is available here.)

GAO cited the increasing incidence of hacking and other breaches, which affected over 113 million health records in 2015, as a key reason to ensure that HHS provides appropriate guidance to and oversight of covered entities and business associates. Hacking and other breaches may result in identify theft, fraud, disruption of health care services, and even national security threats.

GAO’s concerns fell into two primary categories: those related to HHS’s guidance to covered entities and business associates, and those related to oversight efforts.
Continue Reading GAO Recommends that HHS Strengthen Privacy and Security Guidance and Oversight

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 NHS found a number of shortcomings, described below.  The  Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the National Data Guardian (NDG, led by Dame Fiona Caldicott) made a range of recommendations, including new security standards, stronger inspection and enforcement around security lapses and re-identification of anonymized patient data, and an eight-point process around assuming and respecting patient consent decisions.

Following the public consultation, the new security standards could eventually be required and audited by government inspectors from the CQC, and imposed under revised standard NHS England contract terms.  CQC inspectors could potentially act on tip-offs from NHS Digital (formerly known as the NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre, ‘HSCIC’).  Those tip-offs could be based on low scores obtained by organizations in their annual NHS Information Governance Toolkit (IGT) self-assessments.  The IGT, which the reviewers said should be redesigned, applies both to NHS bodies and their commercial vendors.

The new consent model, meanwhile, could provide more streamlined, system-wide consents for use of patient data for purposes including quality assurance and research.

The CQC and the NDG’s findings and twenty-four recommendations were jointly presented in a covering letter to the UK government, available here, and fuller reports, available here and here (CQC and NDG, respectively).  This post provides a brief summary of their main findings and recommendations.  For the consultation questions themselves, see here.
Continue Reading UK Government Considering New Patient Data Security and Research Consent Standards, Sanctions

Earlier this month the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), released a report to Congress highlighting “large gaps” in policies and oversight surrounding access to and security and privacy of health information held by certain “mHealth technologies” and…
Continue Reading ONC Report to Congress Identifies Gaps in Oversight of Privacy and Security of mHealth Technologies and Health Social Media

On March 27, 2016, New York became the first State to require electronic prescribing for both controlled and non-controlled substances and to provide for civil and criminal penalties for doctors failing to comply. Electronic prescribing means the patient no longer receives a paper prescription; rather, he or she chooses a…
Continue Reading New York’s Electronic Prescription Requirement

Earlier today, on the InsideMedicalDevices blog, our colleague posted a summary of the FDA’s recent issuance of draft guidance on “Postmarket Management of Cybersecurity in Medical Devices.”  The release of the draft guidance coincided with the conclusion of a two-day public workshop hosted by the FDA entitled, “Moving Forward: Collaborative …
Continue Reading After Two-Day Workshop, CDRH Releases Postmarket Cybersecurity Draft Guidance