Sunnybrook and HIPAAT Form Innovation Centre Relationship

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Feb. 8, 2012) - Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre (Sunnybrook), a leading teaching hospital affiliated with the University of Toronto and one of Canada's largest trauma and acute care hospitals, and HIPAAT Inc. (HIPAAT), a leading provider of consent management and auditing solutions for healthcare, today announce their Innovation Centre relationship and the successful proof-of-concept integration of HIPAAT's privacy tools with Sunnybrook's new SunnyCare platform.

SunnyCare is the single clinical information system Sunnybrook clinicians will go to for all healthcare information both within and beyond the organization. Platform users will be able to seamlessly access the fully integrated information environment via their smart phones, tablets and other HTML5-compliant mobile platforms. SunnyCare is planned to interoperate with other project architectures including ConnectingGTA, the $72 million project to electronically link 700 healthcare providers in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

SunnyCare involves three over-arching concepts: access, integration, and user-centered design. As to streamlining workflow, tremendous effort has been expended to ensure that the user experience is so intuitive, no training on the SunnyCare platform is necessary.

HIPAAT consent management electronically manages patients' consent to the collection, use and disclosure of their personal health information (PHI), bringing an essential privacy component to health information access.

"HIPAAT's consent management and auditing service will add patient privacy to SunnyCare," said Jeff Curtis, Sunnybrook's Chief Privacy Officer. "With HIPAAT's tools, SunnyCare will be able to alert clinicians to the presence of personal health information restrictions and allow, track and report on override [break-the-glass] access to restricted PHI."

Under Ontario's Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA), which governs the collection, use and disclosure of PHI within the healthcare community, the "lock-box" provision allows individuals to restrict health information custodians from sharing their PHI. It also enables individuals to restrict anyone from viewing specific PHI contained within their health record. (In jurisdictions in the United States, such provisions would be accommodated in an "Opt-out with Exceptions" consent model).

"Ease of use and improved workflow are critical to SunnyCare," said Dr. Edward Etchells, Medical Director of Information Services and Staff Physician in the Division of General Internal Medicine. "Although HIPAAT's privacy tools are always at work they are straightforward and do not get in the way of the positive clinical experience we insist upon."

"We were delighted to collaborate with Sunnybrook on the patient privacy component of SunnyCare," said Kel Callahan, HIPAAT President and COO. "We are also pleased to have been approved as Sunnybrook's single source for consent management and auditing."

SunnyCare interoperates with HIPAAT's consent management and centralized privacy auditing service in keeping with the principles of internationally-recognized Privacy by Design. The proof-of-concept utilized HIPAAT's Java Consent Validation Interface (JCVI) and Java Auditlog Toolkit (JAT). With assistance from Sunnybrook, HIPAAT developed the dialogue box which notifies the user that override access to PHI is required, captures the reason for override and subsequently triggers an email notification to the Privacy Officer of the override activity.

About Sunnybrook

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre is inventing the future of health care for the one million patients the hospital cares for each year through the dedication of its more than 10,000 staff and volunteers. An internationally recognized leader in research and education and a full affiliation with the University of Toronto distinguishes Sunnybrook as one of Canada's premier academic health sciences centres. Sunnybrook specializes in caring for Canada's war veterans, high‐risk pregnancies, critically‐ill newborns, adults and the elderly, and treating and preventing cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurological and psychiatric disorders, orthopaedic and arthritic conditions and traumatic injuries.

About HIPAAT

HIPAAT (hip • at) provides consent management and privacy auditing solutions to healthcare. Our SOA-based software balances consumer information privacy with the clinical need to access personal health information. Our interoperable, standards-based approach enables stakeholders at all levels of health data sharing to implement, audit and enforce patient, organizational and jurisdictional privacy policies. For more information, visit www.hipaat.com.