AUSTIN, TX – The Patient Privacy Rights Foundation and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs announced Wednesday they will co-host the nation’s first public summit to discuss the future of health privacy in the digital age. “Getting IT Right: Protecting Patient Privacy in a Wired World” will be held on June 13 at the Georgetown Law Center in Washington, D.C.

Officials say the event is the first in a planned series of forums on this theme. The summit will be interactive and audience members will be expected to contribute questions to panels and participate in work groups to identify urgent health privacy needs, along with the immediate steps needed to deliver responsible and realistic solutions.

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“The goal of the summit is to create the world’s premier public forum on health privacy issues by uniting a ‘brain trust’ of experts – academics, advocates, government, health care, and those in the technology field – who are willing to work together to ensure health privacy is a center-piece of U.S. health care system reforms," says Deborah C. Peel, MD, chair of the board of directors of Patient Privacy Right. "We’re very pleased with the response to the Summit, from panelists and speakers to sponsors, which no doubt speaks to the importance and urgency of these issues today and into the future.”

The key issue to be addressed at the summit is whether the nations's new health IT infrastructure will afford individuals proper control over the sharing of their personal health information, officials say.

Benedicte Callan, Sid Richardson Fellow of health innovation and policy at the LBJ School, says that the United States is approaching a crossroads in patient privacy.

“Designed well, this digital health information system could be the foundation for a more efficient 21st Century health care system,” she said. “It could lower costs, make care more safe and effective while leading to new treatments by benefiting research. But without proper protections built in up front, the HIT system could compromise the fundamental rights of citizens to protect their most sensitive personal health information.”

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The Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs is a graduate component of The University of Texas at Austin. Its mission is to develop leaders and innovative ideas that will help our state, the nation and the international community address critical public policy challenges in an ever increasingly interconnected and interdependent world.

“The LBJ School has been preparing leaders for 40 years to help find innovative solutions to the most complex public policy issues and challenges of our modern world,” said Robert Hutchings, dean of the LBJ School. “Therefore, we see it as critically important to engage in this issue on every level – local, state, national, international – through research and collaborative partnerships in conferences such as this one. We are especially pleased to join with Patient Privacy Rights and with the other conference participants on working together towards solutions to one of the greatest privacy challenges of our time.”