Established in June 2006 by RTI International through a contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration (HISPC) originally comprised 34 states and territories. HISPC phase 3 began in April 2008, and HISPC now comprises 42 states and territories, and aims to address the privacy and security challenges presented by electronic health information exchange through multi-state collaboration. Each HISPC participant continues to have the support of its state or territorial governor and maintains a steering committee and contact with a range of local stakeholders to ensure that developed solutions accurately reflect local preferences.

The third phase comprises seven multi-state collaborative privacy and security projects focused on analyzing consent data elements in state law:

• Studying intrastate and interstate consent policies;
• Developing tools to help harmonize state privacy laws;
• Developing tools and strategies to educate and engage consumers;
• Developing a toolkit to educate providers;
• Recommending basic security policy requirements; and
• Developing inter-organizational agreements.

Each project is designed to develop common, replicable, multi-state solutions that have the potential to reduce variation in and harmonize privacy and security practices, policies, and laws.

Please see the HISPC page for more information.
 
The State Alliance for e-Health
The State Alliance for e-Health (State Alliance), initiated in late 2006 and established by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices through a contract with HHS, is designed to advance state-level health IT decisions and approaches through the use of a collaborative body that brings together key state decision makers. The State Alliance is a consensus-based, executive-level body of state elected and appointed officials, formed to address the unique role that states can play in facilitating electronic health information exchange through the exploration of solutions to programmatic and legal issues.

In October 2008, the State Alliance released its first report to the states Accelerating Progress: Using Health Information Technology and Electronic Health Information Exchange to Improve Care. The report is meant to spur continued innovation in states to make the vision of an interconnected, efficient, quality-based health care system – and ultimately a healthier American public – a reality. The State Alliance specifically highlights e-prescribing and consumer privacy as critical to advancing e-Health in America and encourages states to be proactive in creating and implementing policies that advance these and other e-health initiatives. Future State Alliance efforts will focus on privacy and security and assisting states in implementing select recommendations.

Please see the State Alliance page for more information.