On 9/17/2013 2:02 PM, Nathan wrote:
On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 4:48 PM, Joseph Chirum <[email protected]> wrote:
If it were Art, the copyright would be clearly defined. If it is technical
craft in the medical field, such images fall unto another category all
together. Any display of such images would need the patient consent to be
HIPPA compliant, or other agreement binding.
It's just not that simple, unfortunately. HIPAA applies to personally
identifying information; I think it'd be easy to argue that the
presumption on imagery, devoid of identifying accompanying text, is
that it is de facto de-identified and thus exempt from HIPAA scrutiny.
It would be easy to argue that, yes. It would also be easy to argue the
opposite, that in a variety of circumstances medical imagery might well
be individually identifying. For example, if an image shows any
distinguishing characteristics (and many times the reason we would be
interested in having the image is because of some distinguishing
characteristic), those could be used to identify the patient in
question. After all, that's pretty much what the use of fingerprints and
dental records in forensic investigations entails. It may be less
familiar in the context of modern medical imaging, either because the
images are targeting hopefully-temporary characteristics (injuries or
illnesses) or because forensics has focused most of the attention on DNA
as its strongest tool. But many medical images could be used for similar
purposes.
--Michael Snow
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