A WWW IMPLEMENTATION OF NATIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PROTECTING ELECTRONIC HEALTH INFORMATION

In March, of 1997, the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences issued the report, ''For the Record: Protecting E lectronic Health Information.'' Concluding that the current practices at the majority of health care facilities in the United States are ins ufficient, the Council delineated both technical and organizational ap proaches to protecting electronic health information. The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center recently implemented a proof-of-concept, Web- based, cross-institutional medical record, CareWeb, which incorporates the NRC security and confidentiality recommendations. We report on ou r WWW implementation of the NRC recommendations and an initial evaluat ion of the balance between ease of use and confidentiality.