Mid-Atlantic Health Law TOPICS

Synthesizing data into a single workable system has been a Holy Grail for health care providers for years. With breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, the quest for a unified system is becoming available, using what has been coined “data fabric.”

Data fabric is technology that allows an organization to combine all data sources it uses into one interconnected system. This brings together different devices, storage systems, computer interfaces and programming languages, whether the data is stored on-premises or in the Cloud. 

As data fabric becomes more prevalent, it will be necessary for health care providers to review existing data contracts to determine, among other things, the following:

• Is there a vendor tasked with handling the integration of data from various sources, including data created via machine learning, as well as providing analytics for the integrated data?
• Do contracts allow access to all integrated data and identify authorized users?
• Does the contract include proper security, and the meeting of HIPAA obligations for all data that may be integrated?
• Who owns the data, including new data sets that are gathered or electronically created?

Ned T. Himmelrich
410-576-4171 • nhimmelrich@gfrlaw.com