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Privacy Toolkit

OTN has developed this "best practices" toolkit as a resource for OTN Members, health care providers, privacy officers and Telemedicine Coordinators to help them practice within a telemedicine environment while meeting the legislative requirements of the Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004 (PHIPA).


Privacy Impact Assessment

When OTN provides the technical and operational supports to allow for real-time two- way videoconferencing between two or more health information custodians for the purpose of disclosing personal health information, OTN is considered a health information network provider under Ontario Regulation 329/04 of the Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004.

The Regulation requires that OTN conduct an assessment of the services provided to health information custodians with respect to how the services provided via telemedicine may affect the privacy of the individuals who are the subject of the information.

A Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) was conducted in July, 2006 and its findings assisted OTN in designing its privacy program. A more detailed assessment of its current privacy program is scheduled for May/June 2007 and the findings from this assessment will be made available to each applicable health information custodian, consistent with the requirements of the Regulation.

In November of 2009, the Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN) commissioned an assessment to identify potential privacy risks arising from our new Teleophthalmology service offering. A summary of the results of that assessment is available here.

Threat and Risk Assessment

In order to ensure that adequate safeguards were implemented to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of patient information, a detailed Threat and Risk Assessment (TRA) of OTN's network and systems architecture was performed in March, 2006 by an independent third party. The results of the TRA assisted OTN in the implementation of its safeguards and will be made available to each applicable health information custodian.

In November of 2009, the Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN) commissioned an assessment to identify potential information security risks arising from our new Teleophthalmology service offering. The results of the assessment are available here.

Links to privacy related websites



Resources

Click on the resource type to expand your selection.