Bradley Merrill Thompson, a Member of the Firm in the Health Care and Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in HealthData Management, in “Fitbit Wellness Platform Now HIPAA Compliant.”
Following is an excerpt:
But, Fitbit’s compliance with HIPAA is not just valuable for corporate wellness programs and health plans, argues Bradley Merrill Thompson, an attorney at Washington, D.C.-based law firm Epstein Becker Green who counsels medical device companies on regulatory issues. Clinicians also stand to benefit.
“This is a big announcement in the sense that healthcare providers who are subject to these privacy laws have probably been reluctant to make use of products like Fitbit simply because the data management have not historically complied with the privacy laws to which they are subjected,” says Thompson. “By coming into compliance, it means that doctors and others who are regulated under HIPAA can more easily make use of the data. I think many in medicine are salivating at the idea of getting the tremendous trove of data that Fitbit represents, and connecting it to all sorts of therapeutic interventions as well as wellness management tools to assess the impact.”