Protecting medical record information: start your research registries today.

Objective: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 was enacted with the long-term goal of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of health care. It has created sweeping changes for clinical medicine and research. Generally, the standards for privacy of individual, identifiable health information (the privacy rule) require patient consent before their protected health information (PHI) can be employed in clinical research.