WASHINGTON – HHS says a new database will draw from insurance claims, medical records and wearable technology as part of a search for drivers of autism.
The US Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday unveiled a pilot program for the National Institutes of Health to tap into Medicare and Medicaid data in its search for the root causes of autism
The database — which HHS said will draw from insurance claims, medical records, and data from wearable technology such as smartwatches — is one of the first steps in HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s bid to find the causes of autism “by September.”
Yet early signals from health officials that they would build a database to track autism were met with swift rebuke from advocacy organizations and doctors.
HHS nodded to those concerns in its announcement Wednesday. It said NIH and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will start with a data use agreement focused on Medicare and Medicaid enrollees diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, then establish a “secure tech-enabled mechanism” that will share data with “timely, privacy and security compliant data exchange.” The agencies will eventually build the pilot database out to share data on chronic illnesses and their economic burden, HHS said.
“Ever since the registry was first announced, there was an enormous sense of fear in the autism community, and they have concerns: Who’s going to have access to data? How are those data going to be used?” Helen Tager-Flusberg, director of Boston University’s Center for Autism Research and leader of the Coalition of Autism Scientists, told CNN.
There are also limitations to CMS data, Tager-Flusberg said. “If you’re talking about Medicare and Medicaid, that only focuses on certain portions of the population.”
Medicaid is a federal and state partnership covering low-income adults and children. Medicare is a federal program primarily for Americans 65 and older, although younger people with disabilities are also enrolled.
There are permissible uses of CMS data for medical research but very stringent privacy laws, Jeff Wurzburg, former HHS general counsel and a health care regulatory attorney at Norton Rose Fulbright, told CNN before Wednesday’s announcement. “One of the primary, overarching goals of CMS is protection of the beneficiary. So it’s certainly legitimate and reasonable to raise questions about how this data will be collected and protected.”
Autism advocates and scientists have also questioned Kennedy’s claim that health agencies would find the causes of autism by September, a timeline that Bhattacharya already appeared to walk back.
“Science happens at its own pace. We’re accelerating and cutting the red tape that normally comes with putting together a scientific program like this,” he told reporters on April 22. “We’ll have, I hope, in September, something that in place where the scientists that want to want to compete for these awards will be able to do that.”
