Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

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Ad Industry, Privacy Advocates Spar Over 'Do Not Track'

Juliana Gruenwald | Nextgov | September 21, 2012

Lawmakers and the Federal Trade Commission are being lobbied to intervene to help settle differences between some advertising industry representatives and privacy advocates over how to implement a “do-not-track” option giving consumers the choice of whether they want to be tracked online. Read More »

AirStrip, Humetrix and others advise Congress on FDA, FTC, HIPAA

Jonah Comstock | Mobi Health News | July 13, 2016

At a congressional hearing on mobile medical apps today, experts from different sectors of the industry weighed in on the ways they think federal regulation needs to change to create a robust digital health industry while still protecting the safety and wellbeing of patients. The conversation spanned various regulatory bodies and federal programs including HIPAA, the FDA, the FTC, and Medicare. “The regulatory framework for most of these apps is complicated and in some cases troubling,” Nicolas Terry, a law professor at Indiana University said in his prepared testimony. “Here, the oversimplified binary of regulation versus innovation is a poor frame...

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An Overview Of The "Patent Trolls" Debate

Brian T. Yeh | Congressional Research Service | August 20, 2012

Congress has recently demonstrated significant ongoing interest in litigation by “patent assertion entities” (PAEs), which are colloquially known as “patent trolls” and sometimes referred to as “non-practicing entities” (NPEs)... Read More »

Big Sugar's Sweet Little Lies

Gary Taubes and Cristin Kearns Couzens | Mother Jones | November 1, 2012

How the industry kept scientists from asking: Does sugar kill? Read More »

Brokers Use ‘Billions’ Of Data Points To Profile Americans

Craig Timberg, | The Washington Post | May 27, 2014

...information and much, much more is being quietly collected, analyzed and distributed by the nation’s burgeoning data-broker industry, which uses billions of individual data points to produce detailed portraits of virtually every American consumer, the Federal Trade Commission reported Tuesday...

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Congress Dishes Out HIT Budgets, Interoperability Probes

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | December 22, 2014

Ten years after the creation of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, amid record partisan discord, lawmakers are trying to address problems they see in the direction of health IT’s evolution...

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Do Gaps in Health IT Security Laws Stunt Technology Innovation?

Sara Heath | EHR Intelligence | August 10, 2016

A new ONC report details the implications of health IT security laws on health IT innovation and development. Gaps in privacy and security law may be hindering the development and expansion of health IT and EHR use across the industry, a recent report from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology suggests...

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Doctors Inc.: Medicine Goes Corporate As More Physicians Join Hospital Payrolls

Alan Bavley | The Kansas City Star | January 17, 2014

In unprecedented numbers, America’s doctors — those most entrepreneurial and fiercely independent of professionals — are trading in their autonomy for regular work hours and a hospital paycheck. Read More »

EHR Business Environment Must Change To Achieve Interoperability

Greg Slabodkin | Health Data Management | February 4, 2015

The main challenges for the nation’s health IT interoperability are not technical but business related...

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EHR Business Environment Must Change to Achieve Interoperability

Greg Slabodkin | Health Data Management | February 4, 2015

The main challenges for the nation’s health IT interoperability are not technical but business related. That’s the word from former National Coordinators for Health IT speaking in a panel session on Tuesday at ONC’s Annual Meeting in Washington. Farzad Mostashari, M.D., former National Coordinator for HIT and currently CEO of start-up Aledade which partners with independent primary care physicians, warned that business practices among some electronic health records vendors are inhibiting the sharing of health information by restricting information exchange with users of other EHR products.

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Epic Systems Feeling Heat Over Interoperability

Darius Tahir | Modern Healthcare | October 1, 2014

Epic Systems' August decision to retain a Washington lobbyist was widely seen as a sign that the leading electronic health-record system vendor is feeling political heat based on the perceived lack of interoperability between its EHR systems and other systems.

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Exorbitant Prices Are Just One Reason to Loathe the Company That Makes the EpiPen

Oliver Stanley | Quartz | August 24, 2016

It’s not hard for pharma companies to appear villainous, but Mylan, the maker of the EpiPen, may be in a class by itself. Mylan has drawn the ire of patients, consumer groups and now Congress for raising the price of the device 400% since it acquired EpiPen in 2007. The implement, which delivers life-saving medicine for severe allergy sufferers, can now cost more than $300 per pen. It’s only sold in pairs and must be purchased every year because the drug, epinephrine, loses potency over time. Sales of EpiPen are now in excess of $1 billion annually...

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Feds Postpone Bid To Govern Health IT Network

Ken Terry | InformationWeek | September 10, 2012

Bowing to widespread industry objections to its proposals for governing the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN), the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT (ONC) has tabled the project, at least for now. Read More »

FTC Chair Promises Robust Regulation Of Big Data

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | August 22, 2013

Edith Ramirez, the Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission laid out the case for strong consumer protections regulating the private industry’s use of big data, as the agency asks Congress for the power to level civil fines against businesses for weak consumer data security. Read More »

FTC Commissioner: Let Big Data Flourish, But 'Reclaim' Privacy

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | June 27, 2013

The issue of privacy in the era of big data has come to the fore recently in the wake of National Security Agency leaks — as it well should, according to Julie Brill, a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. Read More »