Honest Broker and HIPAA Compliance
The Director of the Registry Research Information Service also manages a collaborative Honest Broker Service. This Honest Broker System was developed for the combined Centers for Pathology and Oncology Informatics (Director: Michael Becich, MD, PhD ) and Center for Pathology Quality and Healthcare Research (Director: Stephen S. Raab, MD ). These centers currently have multiple faculty, staff, and graduate students who perform research as three inter-related groups. The groups are:
- Health Sciences Tissue Bank (HSTB) and Pathology and TMA Shared Service
- Clinical Outcomes
- Registry Research Information Service (Cancer Registry)
The Director of the Health Sciences Tissue Bank (HSTB) and Tissue and Research Pathology Service is Rajiv Dhir, MD , and the Director of the Registry Research Information Service is Sharon Winters, MS, RHIA, CTR. The mission of this Honest Broker Service is to ensure HIPAA compliance for the release of information involving data stored in applications developed, managed and/or utilized by CIS through the following objectives:
- Enhance collaborative research efforts between centers and UPCI programs
- Monitor requests for information & data use practices research
- Quality assurance and process improvement
- Develop common web-based tracking tools
- Centralize documentation
- Centralize training and management
The application for this service was submitted to the IRB on April 30, 2003 and approval was received on May 8, 2003 (IRB Approval # HB 015). There are 28 Honest Brokers included in this service: 12 brokers from the tissue bank, 7 from clinical outcomes and 9 from RRIS All honest brokers involved with this service are certified in accordance with UPMC and University of Pittsburgh IRB policy.