Much of the public is aware of the expectation that electronic health records will contribute to improved quality and reduced costs in heathcare. However, some surveys have revealed that people are concerned about how much of their information gets shared and with whom.

As part of an effort to tackle this problem, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT recently announced the Data Segmentation Initiative, which builds off of metadata standards previously proposed by the office.

The program will allow providers to share certain aspects of patients’ data with other medical professionals in a standardized format, while keeping other sets of information private. For instance, officials used the example of being able to send a patient’s medical history to a specialist without sharing the fact that the individual has been through drug rehabilitation.

Healthcare providers can currently sign up to participate in pilot programs to test the Data Segmentation Initiative.
These programs will launch this fall. In announcing the initiative, officials said that the more they are able to build a diverse set of participants to test the concept, the sooner patients may be able to see the kinds of data security they are looking for.