TrueVault Shares Advice From Apple WWDC: What Developers Need to Know About HealthKit, iOS 8 and HIPAA Compliance

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwired – Jun 2, 2014) – TrueVault, the first company to make HIPAA compliance easy for healthcare applications, today released a new open source guide via GitHub titled, “A Developer’s Guide to HIPAA Compliance” to help developers understand the technical and legal requirements of building health-based applications, including those designed for iOS 8 and Apple’s new HealthKit.

Today is the start of the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, where Apple just announced the upcoming launch of HealthKit and a companion app called Health that enables individuals to store and share their own health information via their iOS device. What many developers don’t know is that if they are building apps to collect, use and share the personal information stored in HealthKit with doctors or other healthcare professionals, their apps need to be HIPAA compliant.

“Anyone can choose to store their own health information on their mobile device, and many people do that already with apps that track things like heart rate, calories burned and blood-sugar levels,” explained Jason Wang, founder and CEO of TrueVault. “But as soon as they share data with a medical professional, it becomes subject to HIPAA regulation.”

Wang expects this to be a major surprise — and not a good one — for web app, mobile app and wearables developers, most of whom are ill prepared for this type of regulation. TrueVault’s new guide is intended to help both commercial and in-house developers:

• Fully consider how their applications might be used to store or share Protected Health Information (PHI), from the government’s point of view;
• Understand the administrative, technical and physical security aspects of HIPAA; and
• Understand how the FDA decides whether to classify an app as a medical device.

TrueVault is also hosting an open HipChat session today from 10am-1pm Pacific for developers looking for real-time answers to questions about HealthKit and HIPAA compliance. Visit http://bit.ly/hipaahotline to participate. “It’s the HIPAA hotline for developers,” said Wang. “There are so many questions about this topic, and it’s essential that developers get it right.” TrueVault partner Accountable, which helps companies manage the Administrative Safeguards for HIPAA, will co-host the session.

“HIPAA compliance is about addressing three main things: administrative, physical and technical safeguards of protected health information,” said Kevin Henry, CEO Accountable. “While compliance can feel daunting, with some advanced planning and knowledge of the law developers can manage the legal requirements and get back to building the next generation of healthcare apps.”

TrueVault is also preparing an SDK for iOS 8. It will be available by the end of July. Developers can sign up now for the SDK by visiting http://go.truevault.com/ios8/.

About Accountable
Accountable is a software platform that aims to make the process of becoming HIPAA compliant simple. By focusing on the administrative elements of HIPAA, Accountable has developed a guided approach to help any organization achieve HIPAA compliance easily. Headquartered in Fort Worth, TX, Accountable was founded in 2013, participated in Techstars Austin, and is led by Kevin Henry and Keith Gee. For more information visit http://accountablehq.com

About TrueVault
TrueVault is the first company to make HIPAA compliance easy for healthcare applications. A VC-backed company based in San Francisco, TrueVault provides a secure API to store health data. Hundreds of web app, mobile app, and wearables developers rely on TrueVault to ensure that their healthcare applications are secure and HIPAA compliant. Learn more at www.TrueVault.com, or follow us at @TrueVault.