Extract from Benjamin Joyner’s article “New York’s Potential Health Data Law Won’t Be the Last”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul is hardly suffering from an empty desk at the moment. While the political future of the nation’s largest city and her own reelection campaign are likely to overshadow other issues, her decision to sign the New York Health Information Privacy Act (HIPA) into law or not will have a substantial impact on data privacy in the state and nationwide.
If signed, the act would be the most sweeping of a series of new state-level health data privacy laws that have come into effect in recent years. But experts suggest that it is highly unlikely to be the last word on the subject in the absence of federal action, itself a highly unlikely prospect.
“States are taking things into their own hands when it comes to businesses that might be collecting health information and aren’t under the scope of the federal law,” said Ron De Jesus, field chief privacy officer at Transcend and former CPO of Grindr. “It’s … a stop gap measure for companies that are starting to collect sensitive personal information, like wearable companies, other apps.”
McDermott Will & Emery global privacy and cybersecurity partner Amy Pimentel concurred. “Given the nature of politics right now, the potential abuses when it comes to people’s privacy, I think that states are really motivated to ensure that businesses are both responsible when it comes to handling this sort of extra sensitive information and also accountable.”
