The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology plans to host the first work group meeting on privacy and security Tuesday in a closed-door session.
Members of the public will not be allowed to join the conference call for the first meeting from 10 a.m. to noon ET, according to work group members. The work group will report to the Health Information Technology Policy Committee at its upcoming meeting Dec. 15, according to ONC spokesperson Nancy Szemraj.
At deadline, Szemraj and ONC head David Blumenthal did not respond to e-mail requests asking why the privacy and security work group meeting was not open to the public.
Blumenthal called for creation of the work group in October after he told the HIT Policy Committee it needed to pause while federal policymakers re-evaluated the direction the government would take in promoting the proposed national health information network. He added that policymakers needed to take a second look at federal privacy and security policy because they realized after extensive testimony at a committee meeting in September the nation hadn't “had a set of principles that make sense.”
