NPR: NIH autism study will pull from private medical records

Sara Geoghegan, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the decision to gather private medical data in this way was a shocking departure from the norm and questioned how NIH planned to protect the information it gained.  

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“I do think that there can be permissible uses of data for medical research when they are properly scoped and when they have strong and robust safeguards in place to protect personal privacy and personal information. I am very concerned about this type of database that collects information from commercial sources,” she said. 

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