ONCHIT to host medical identity theft town hall meeting

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT) will host a one-day town hall meeting Oct. 15 to discuss how health IT can be utilized to prevent and detect medical identity theft.

The agency also said that the healthcare stakeholders from the public and private sectors will share their knowledge and experience on medical identity theft and gain insights into trends and future developments.

ONCHIT also said that public discussion during the town hall “will feed into and support potential recommendations for the prevention, detection and remediation of this form of identity theft, leveraging health IT and best practices and to foster ongoing collaboration and communication.”

In June, ONCHIT, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, awarded approximately $450,000 to Booz Allen Hamilton, a strategy and consulting technology firm, to assess and evaluate the scope of the medical identity theft problem in the United States. Booz Allen was saddled with the task of considering the intersection of health IT and medical identity theft, including examining how health IT can be used to detect and prevent medical identity theft, according to ONCHIT.

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