[Wikimedia-l] Radiological images

[Michael Snow]

On 9/17/2013 2:02 PM, Nathan wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 4:48 PM, Joseph Chirum <sundog358 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> If it were Art, the copyright would be clearly defined.  If it is technical craft in the medical field, such images fall unto another category all together.  Any display of such images would need the patient consent to be HIPPA compliant, or other agreement binding.
> It's just not that simple, unfortunately. HIPAA applies to personally
> identifying information; I think it'd be easy to argue that the
> presumption on imagery, devoid of identifying accompanying text, is
> that it is de facto de-identified and thus exempt from HIPAA scrutiny.
It would be easy to argue that, yes. It would also be easy to argue the 
opposite, that in a variety of circumstances medical imagery might well 
be individually identifying. For example, if an image shows any 
distinguishing characteristics (and many times the reason we would be 
interested in having the image is because of some distinguishing 
characteristic), those could be used to identify the patient in 
question. After all, that's pretty much what the use of fingerprints and 
dental records in forensic investigations entails. It may be less 
familiar in the context of modern medical imaging, either because the 
images are targeting hopefully-temporary characteristics (injuries or 
illnesses) or because forensics has focused most of the attention on DNA 
as its strongest tool. But many medical images could be used for similar 
purposes.

--Michael Snow