ACC NYC Healthcare CLE: Digital Health as Disruptor

Digital technology is transforming virtually all aspects of commercial and personal life, and health care is no exception.  These technological advances have the potential to alter the delivery, coordination, monitoring, and tracking – as well as the very nature – of health care services.  At the same time, digital technology has the potential to disrupt the status quo of dominant players in the health care sector – from providers, to health plans, and to intermediaries such as group purchasing organizations and pharmacy benefits managers – creating winners and losers.  The existing legal framework for regulating health care and health care transactions, a legacy of “brick and mortar” health systems, has not always kept pace with the digital health transformations.  As these transformations unfold, those operating in the health care industry need to both adapt to and embrace that change, monitor regulators’ evolving approach, and ensure compliance.

Today’s panel will first seek to frame for in-house counsel, the kinds of changes that are already underway to transform health care – from digital analytics, precision medicine, wearable technologies recording and collecting reams of personal health data, to remote monitoring tools, “virtual” health care software, telehealth, and interoperable and interconnected health records shared globally among providers and plans alike.  The panelists will then discuss the interplay between these technologies and current laws restricting the use and disclosure of protected health information, regulating the delivery of health care services, and that may affect how competition unfolds, including:

• HIPAA and privacy laws
• Corporate practice of medicine
• Licensure and regulation of health care professionals
• Fraud and abuse
• Antitrust laws

The panelists will highlight how these laws – intended to protect the quality of care, integrity of health data, and competition – can pose a compliance challenge to both the “disruptors” looking to introduce new digital tools for data sharing and streamlining health care delivery, and those health care entities trying to adjust to and survive in this new environment, perhaps even by trying to stave off competition from the disruptors.

The panelists will also touch on key regulatory changes in the pipeline, and will forecast some other changes on the horizon as digital technology – and regulators’ enforcement and policy approaches –continues to evolve.  Finally, the panelists will suggest ways in-house counsel can assist their companies and organizations to prepare for and thrive in the digital health transformation – consistent with law.

Speakers

• Margaret M. O'Brien, Global Chief Counsel - Health & Benefits, Mercer
• Brian McGovern, Partner, Crowell & Moring
• Jodi Daniel, Partner, Crowell & Moring
• Alexis Gilman, Partner, Crowell & Moring

Crowell & Moring is a sponsor.

Crowell & Moring attorneys and their in-house clients may register as guests without charge by using the code CMGUEST (all caps).

If you have any questions, please contact Mae Hsieh.