Steven Daviss, MD, DFAPA

Although HIPAA nominally guarantees an individual's right to access his or her protected health information, several groups and organizations, claiming that HIPAA is inadequate, have put forth declarations of patients' rights to protect and control their own health data. But, says the author of this article, even these measures are too vague. Instead, he proposes a system that would facilitate true and complete control over personal health data, to the point that patients could license access to researchers and others.