Training under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) required, in addition to its protection of health care coverage, that the government develop privacy standards for the protection of individual health information transferred from health providers to health insurers. The final rules for this protection, known as the Standards for Privacy of Individual Identifiable Health Information (the Privacy Rule), are now in effect, since the mandatory compliance date passed on April 14, 2003 (www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/finalreg.html). MIT research operations, in addition to its Medical Department, are subject to the Privacy Rule for any protocol that calls for the use or transfer of personal health information obtained from human subjects of research. The Committee on the use of Humans as Experimental Subjects (COUHES) has been designated to review requests for authorization for release, waivers or alteration of personal health information in research. Any researcher who contemplates the use of human subjects in a protocol should consult the COUHES website (web.mit.edu/couhes) for information and training requirements under the Privacy Rule.

Last updated 6/25/03