HIPAA was passed into law in 1996–not exactly the heyday of digital technology. It wasn’t until over a decade later that Congress decided to implement updates to the law to address the rise of digital technology. Their goal? To push providers to update their record-keeping to Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, secure those systems effectively, and eliminate the loopholes that would prevent adherence to the law. 

Thus, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health, or HITECH, was born. Here, we’ll discuss some of the changes that HITECH made to HIPAA law and how that informs the compliance obligations of businesses in the healthcare industry. 

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Healthcare data and privacy have been a priority for lawmakers and IT professionals for decades. Maintaining privacy related to health information, and giving ownership and agency over disclosure to patients, drives current regulations around Personal Health Information (PHI). The most important of these regulations, HIPAA, has undergone various changes and revisions over time to meet modern security demands. One of these changes, the implementation of HITECH and digital record keeping, includes several additional rules on managing digital health records, including the concept of “meaningful use.”

Here, we will discuss what it means when HITECH legal language encourages the meaningful use of health records and how that can impact compliance and security. 

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HIPAA is a detailed and comprehensive set of regulations governing IT systems and data handling in the healthcare industry. As times change, so too has the language of HIPAA evolved to address those changes. One of these updates is the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009. This law modernized HIPAA and directed entities in healthcare to adopt more modern, digital record keeping and security technologies. 

Here, we’ll cover some of the basics of HITECH and what it changed in the language of HIPAA. 

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