On January 6, the California State Senate’s Health Committee unanimously approved California AB 713, a bill that would amend the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) to except from CCPA requirements additional categories of health information, according to an article by attorneys Daniel F. Gottlieb and Deepali Doddi that appeared the most recent National Law Review.
Those categories include data de-identified in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), medical research data, personal information used for public health and safety activities, and patient information that is maintained by HIPAA business associates in the same manner as HIPAA-protected health information (PHI).
If enacted, the bill would simplify CCPA compliance strategies for many HIPAA-regulated entities, life sciences companies, research institutions and health data aggregators. Presently, the CCPA does not regulate PHI that is collected by either a HIPAA covered entity or business associate.