[Federal Register Volume 79, Number 27 (Monday, February 10, 2014)]
[Notices]
[Pages 7671-7673]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2014-02785]


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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information 
Technology


Announcement of Requirements and Registration for ``Digital 
Privacy Notice Challenge''

AGENCY: Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information 
Technology, HHS.
    Award Approving Official: Karen DeSalvo, National Coordinator for 
Health Information Technology.

ACTION: Notice.

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SUMMARY: The HIPAA Privacy Rule gives individuals a fundamental right 
to be informed of the privacy practices of health plans and health care 
providers, as well as to be informed of their privacy rights with 
respect to their personal health information. Health plans and covered 
health care providers are required to develop and distribute a notice 
that provides a clear, user friendly explanation of these rights and 
practices.\1\ In practice, however, many patients have found that these 
notices

[[Page 7672]]

can be difficult to read and poorly comprehended.\2\
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    \1\ 45 CFR 164.520.
    \2\ https://www.privacyrights.org/ar/HIPAA-Reading.htm.
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    The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information 
Technology (ONC) recently collaborated with the Office for Civil Rights 
(OCR) to develop model notices of privacy practices (NPP) that clearly 
convey the required information to patients in an accessible format. 
These model notices can be customized by covered entities (doctors, 
hospitals and other health care providers covered by HIPAA who maintain 
patient data, health plans) and then printed for office display and 
distributed to patients.
    The new model notice resources offer an opportunity to improve what 
covered entities display online. Research shows that online privacy 
policies are often not read or well-understood by the general 
public.\3\ As in the case of privacy notices displayed in medical 
offices, if patients cannot understand what they are reading online, 
they will not be properly informed of their privacy rights, including 
their right to access their health information. A patient's 
understanding of his or her privacy rights is an important component of 
quality health care and can impact patient-provider communication as 
well as patient engagement in health care.
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    \3\ Turow, Hoofnagle, Mulligan, Good and Grossklags. The Federal 
Trade Commission and Consumer Privacy in the Coming Decade. I/S--A 
Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society. 740. (2008).
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    The Digital Privacy Notice Challenge leverages the consumer tested 
and preferred content and formats developed recently as part of the 
joint ONC/OCR model NPP project and provides an award to the creators 
of the best online versions of an NPP. Out-of-the-box thinking could be 
effectively applied to the challenge of creating an online NPP that 
patients would actually read and understand, helping to break down the 
barriers to patients taking greater control of their own health and 
health care. We hope to bring a variety of creative minds to the task 
of developing a patient friendly resource, as well as enable users to 
interact with the proposed notices and identify the most effective 
approaches.
    The statutory authority for this challenge competition is Section 
105 of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (Public L. 111-
358).

DATES: 
 Submission period begins: February 7, 2014
 Submission period ends: April 7, 2014
 Winners announced: Event TBD May-June, 2014

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Adam Wong, 202-720-2866

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

Subject of Challenge Competition

    The Challenge is a call for designers, developers, and patient 
privacy experts to create an online model notice of privacy practices 
that is compelling, readable, and understandable by patients and is 
easily integrated into existing entity Web sites. Submissions will use 
the content and design elements developed recently as part of the joint 
ONC/OCR paper-based model NPP project. Submitters are challenged to 
take the model language and format(s) and develop effective approaches 
to integrating them into an online interface. The module, or generator, 
is intended to live on GitHub and be made available open-source such 
that any organization can implement it on its Web site.
    The Submission must:
     Be coded in JavaScript for the interaction piece (as a 
JQuery plugin, Node.JS module, or standalone script) and HTML/CSS for 
the presentation layer.
     Use the content developed jointly by ONC and OCR, 
available at http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/modelnotices.html. 
The formatting design elements of the paper notices were consumer-
tested and should be looked to as a guide, but successful submissions 
will factor in the differences between reading and consuming content on 
paper versus online.
     Allow organizations using it to customize the content, 
consistent with the options made available through the paper-based 
model.
    The intent of the challenge is to design a model digital notice 
that creatively informs and educates the user, so simply cutting-and-
pasting the content into an online document will not be sufficient to 
win an award.
    At the end of the submission period, Submissions will be posted on 
the challenge Web site for a public voting period of two weeks.
    In addition to the functioning generator, Solvers must submit a 
slide deck of no more than seven slides that describes how the 
submission functions, how to install and operate the generator, the 
system requirements to run the generator, and addresses the application 
requirements.

Eligibility Rules for Participating in the Competition

    To be eligible to win a prize under this challenge, an individual 
or entity--
    (1) Shall have registered to participate in the competition under 
the rules promulgated by the Office of the National Coordinator for 
Health Information Technology.
    (2) Shall have complied with all the requirements under this 
section.
    (3) In the case of a private entity, shall be incorporated in and 
maintain a primary place of business in the United States, and in the 
case of an individual, whether participating singly or in a group, 
shall be a citizen or permanent resident of the United States.
    (4) May not be a Federal entity or Federal employee acting within 
the scope of their employment.
    (5) Shall not be an HHS employee working on their applications or 
submissions during assigned duty hours.
    (6) Shall not be an employee of Office of the National Coordinator 
for Health IT.
    (7) Federal grantees may not use Federal funds to develop COMPETES 
Act challenge applications unless consistent with the purpose of their 
grant award.
    (8) Federal contractors may not use Federal funds from a contract 
to develop COMPETES Act challenge applications or to fund efforts in 
support of a COMPETES Act challenge submission.
    An individual or entity shall not be deemed ineligible because the 
individual or entity used Federal facilities or consulted with Federal 
employees during a competition if the facilities and employees are made 
available to all individuals and entities participating in the 
competition on an equitable basis.
    Entrants must agree to assume any and all risks and waive claims 
against the Federal Government and its related entities, except in the 
case of willful misconduct, for any injury, death, damage, or loss of 
property, revenue, or profits, whether direct, indirect, or 
consequential, arising from my participation in this prize contest, 
whether the injury, death, damage, or loss arises through negligence or 
otherwise.
    Entrants must also agree to indemnify the Federal Government 
against third party claims for damages arising from or related to 
competition activities.

Registration Process for Participants

    To register for this Challenge, participants can access http://www.challenge.gov and search for ``Digital Privacy Notice Challenge.''

[[Page 7673]]

Prize

 Total: $25,000 in prizes
 First Place: $15,000
 Second Place: $7,000
 Third Place: $3,000

Payment of the Prize

    Prize will be paid by contractor.

Basis upon Which Winner Will be Selected

    The review panel will make selections based upon the following 
criteria:
 Accurate use of model NPP content
 Use of best practices in presenting web content for 
consumption, including use of plain/understandable writing in any 
additional framing language
 Visual appeal
 Capacity to link to other relevant covered entity content
 Results from public voting period
    In order for an entry to be eligible to win this Challenge, it must 
meet the following requirements:
    1. General--Contestants must provide continuous access to the tool, 
a detailed description of the tool, instructions on how to install and 
operate the tool, and system requirements required to run the tool 
(collectively, ``Submission'')
    2. Acceptable platforms--The tool must be designed for use with 
existing web, mobile web, electronic health record, or other platform 
for supporting interactions of the content provided with other 
capabilities.
    3. Section 508 Compliance--Contestants must acknowledge that they 
understand that, as a pre-requisite to any subsequent acquisition by 
FAR contract or other method, they are required to make their proposed 
solution compliant with Section 508 accessibility and usability 
requirements at their own expense. Any electronic information 
technology that is ultimately obtained by HHS for its use, development, 
or maintenance must meet Section 508 accessibility and usability 
standards. Past experience has demonstrated that it can be costly for 
solution-providers to ``retrofit'' solutions if remediation is later 
needed. The HHS Section 508 Evaluation Product Assessment Template, 
available at http://www.hhs.gov/od/vendors/index.html, provides a 
useful roadmap for developers to review. It is a simple, web-based 
checklist utilized by HHS officials to allow vendors to document how 
their products do or do not meet the various Section 508 requirements.
    4. No HHS or ONC logo--The app must not use HHS', ONC's, or OCR's 
logos or official seals in the Submission, and must not claim 
endorsement.
    5. Functionality/Accuracy--A Submission may be disqualified if it 
fails to function as expressed in the description provided by the user, 
or if it provides inaccurate or incomplete information.
    6. Security--Submissions must be free of malware. Contestant agrees 
that ONC may conduct testing on the app to determine whether malware or 
other security threats may be present. ONC may disqualify the 
Submission if, in ONC's judgment, the app may damage government or 
others' equipment or operating environment.

Additional Information

    General Conditions: ONC reserves the right to cancel, suspend, and/
or modify the Contest, or any part of it, for any reason, at ONC's sole 
discretion.
    Intellectual Property: Winning entries as determined by ONC will be 
licensed to all under the Apache License 2.0.

    Authority:  15 U.S.C. 3719.

    Dated: February 3, 2014.
Karen DeSalvo,
National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
[FR Doc. 2014-02785 Filed 2-7-14; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4150-45-P