DS4P Initiative Successfully Sunsetting May 2
The following is communication from ONC.
The Data Segmentation for Privacy (DS4P) Initiative is coming to a close. This ONC Standards and Interoperability (S&I) Framework initiative was launched more than two years ago and will be brought to a very successful completion at the final “all-hands” community meeting on Friday, May 2, 2014 from 12pm-1pm EDT.
During the Friday meeting, the work of the hundreds of initiative members, stakeholders, and effective pilots will be summarized and acknowledged by speakers including Joy Pritts, JD, chief privacy officer and Doug Fridsma, M.D., Ph.D., chief science officer & director, Office of Science & Technology (OST).
Under the DS4P initiative, specifications were developed that would allow highly sensitive health information to flow more freely to authorized users while improving the ability of health IT systems to implement existing privacy protection requirements for certain types of healthcare data, such as behavioral health information.
The core materials for this initiative are all available on the DS4P Initiative page on the S&I Framework wiki. These materials were used by two Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), Health Level 7 (HL7) and Integrating the Health Enterprise (IHE) to accelerate the development and publication of DS4P standards and technical documents. The HL7 standard was tested, voted on, and approved at the highest level to become what SDOs call a Normative Standard and the official name of the final standard is “HL7 Implementation Guide: Data Segmentation for Privacy (DS4P), Release 1“
Sponsored by ONC’s Office of the Chief Privacy Officer (OCPO), and supported by the Office of Science and Technology’s (OST) S&I Framework, the DS4P initiative exemplifies the type of success that is achievable through close collaboration among multiple federal and private industry stakeholders. As a key step going forward, ONC intends to remain involved by encouraging the actual use and adoption of the DS4P standard into health information technology (HIT) systems and products.
The materials produced by this initiative, along with the extensive work of the pilots are integral in making data segmentation for privacy possible in the US. For more information about DS4P or to get information about participating in the close-out meeting, please visit the DS4P Initiative page.