HIPAA compliance for healthcare apps: Interview with TrueVault CEO Jason Wang

[audio mp3="https://healthbb.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/hbdew0022-david-e-williams-interviews-truevault-ceo-jason-wang.mp3"][/audio]The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is designed to protect identifiable health information to preserve patient privacy. Compliance is an intimidating barrier for app developers, among others. TrueVault is a young company that provides an API to make HIPAA compliance more straightforward.In this podcast interview, TrueVault CEO and founder Jason Wang answers my questions:

1. What is HIPAA and who has to pay attention to it?
2. What are the implications of HIPAA for developers of healthcare software?
3. What additional challenges and opportunities arise from the shift from desktop to mobile devices and cloud storage?
4. Apple is entering the healthcare app space, but it isn’t allowing personal health information to be stored on iCloud. What’s going on there?
5. Is there a clear distinction between consumer health data and PHI? How do providers and app developers navigate that issue?
6. How does TrueVault help?
7. What role, if any do consumers have with HIPAA compliance?

---By healthcare business consultant David E. Williams, president of Health Business Group.