Patient-Centric Privacy: Envisioning collaboration between payers, providers & patients with the patient at the core

Protection of personal healthcare information (PHI) has been as a significant hindrance to the acceptance, adoption and continued use of healthcare information technology (HIT). As nations and corporations encourage innovation in the healthcare sector for better outcomes for all its stakeholders, they are proceeding under a latent assumption - the equation of data stewardship with data ownership. This notion relegates the patient to the role of information provider and empowers infrastructure owners with data ownership rights. In this paper, we introduce Patient-Centric Privacy, which refers to 1) the recognition that patients are a fundamental and integral part of the disclosure, access and use processes, and 2) to the ability of the patient to control the release of their healthcare information.