Health Tech Strategies, LLC is a McLean, Virginia-based consulting firm uniquely focused on the public and private sector policy environment with regard to research, development and implementation of new health care technologies.

During the past year, Health Tech Strategies has produced the nation's most extensive series of regional workshops concerning data security and privacy of individually identifiable health information. To find out about an upcoming seminar near you -- and receive free data security / privacy policy updates -- visit http://www.nonprofitmgt.com/privacy.

At more than twenty locations, leading governmental and private sector experts have discussed the legal, regulatory and standards environment for compliance; model data security policies, procedures and practices; and everything staff and patients might need to know about an organization's security systems. Additional workshops are being throughout 2000 focusing on:

• Current Legal, Regulatory and Standards Environment
• Detailed Requirements of DHHS Privacy Regulations
• Keeping Security Policies and Procedures Current
• Assigning Responsibility for Maintaining Information Security
• Developing Consent Documents, Agreements, and Disclosures
• Complying with Patient Information Requirements

More than 1000 information technology and records professionals; risk managers; health lawyers; practice managers; academic leaders; administrators; health educators and public health officials have attended 1 day or 1 1/2 day seminars.

The seminars have been held in conjunction with major academic institutions, regional medical libraries, health care organizations and private sector groups.

Workshops have already been held (or are being planned) in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Hartford, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Oakland, Nashville, New York, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Washington, D.C..

The seminars have been supported and publicized with the assistance of health care industry and technology partners, sponsors and collaborating organizations broadly withing the health field and also targeted to specific audiences by affiliated associations, consortia, and corporations, groups, and host institutions, including:

• American Hospital Association
• American Health Informatics Management Association
• American Medical Informatics Association
• American Telemedicine Association
• Arthur Andersen Consulting
• Association of American Medical Colleges
• Bell Atlantic
• California Health Care Foundation
• California Information Exchange
• Cleveland Hospital Association
• Computer-based Patient Record Institute
• Connecticut Hospital Association
• CyberTrust, a GTE Company
• DHHS Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
• Faulkner and Gray publishers
• Friends of the National Library of Medicine
• Forum on Privacy and Security in Healthcare
• Healthcare Open Systems and Trials Consortium
• Health Information Privacy Alert newsletter
• Healtheon, Corporation
• IBM Global Healthcare
• Integrated Visions
• Johnson & Johnson, Inc.
• Kaiser Permanente
• Medicalogic, Inc.
• McKenna & Cuneo, LLP
• Morehouse School of Medicine
• Neoteric Inc.
• National Library of Medicine
• New York Academy of Medicine
• Oceania, Inc
• Office for the Advancement of Telehealth, DHHS
• Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, DHHS
• Perot Systems
• Texas Medical Center Regional Library
• University of Colorado Health Sciences Center
• University of Illinois at Chicago
• University of Washington, Division of Biomedical Informatics
• US WEST
• Voluntary Hospitals of America
• 3 Com Global Health Care

Major national and regional speakers from academia, government and industry have included:

• Michael Ackerman, Ph.D., National Library of Medicine
• George Anderson, MD, Executive Vice President & CEO Oceania, Inc.
• Bill Braithwaite, MD, Senior Advisor on Health Information Policy, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• Jeff Collmann, Ph.D., Editor CPRI Toolkit & Georgetown University Medical Center
• Ted Cooper, MD, National Director of Confidentiality, Kaiser Permanente
• John Fanning, LLB, Privacy Advocate, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• Michael Fitzmaurice, Ph.D., Senior Science Advisor, Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, DHHS
• Shannah Koss, Government Healthcare Marketing Manager, IBM
• Roz D. Lasker, M.D. Director, Division of Public Health, New York Academy of Medicine
• Blackford Middleton, M.D., Clinical Director, Medcalogic, Inc.
• Jack W. Smith, M.D., Ph.D., Professor and Chair, Health Informatics, University of Texas Houston, Health Sciences Center
• Sengupta Soumitra, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Medical Informatics, Columbia University
• Dennis Streveler, Ph.D., Strategic Services, Healtheon Corp.
• Annette L. Valenta, DrPH, University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Biomedical and Health Information Sciences

A speaker pool of more than 50 top experts has been assembled, with various combinations of 5-10 speakers used at any given site. Core content for the course has been based upon a recently compiled workbook of the Computer-based Patient Record Institute entitled: "CPRI Toolkit: Managing Information Security in Health Care". More than 200 overview slides have been prepared (not including individual speaker presentations) as part of these efforts to guide workshop participants through an agenda which follows the organization of the CPRI Toolkit.

Contact us at (703) 790-4933 or nealn@hlthtech.com to inquire about producing a seminar for your organization.