united-states united-kingdom australia health
Mobile app Collects Children&#39;s Data
<p>We are working on a medical app for children.  (Of course parents will access the application.)</p>

<p>Is it lawful to store children's health records on a webserver?</p>

<p>My client says it's illegal; that we should always store the data on a remote local server to protect the minor's protected information.</p>

<p>Is this the case?</p>

<p>In the United States, the main statute governing the use of health care information is HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.</p>

<p>HIPAA and its related statutes and regulations detail what you can and can't do with medical information. You can't always collect it; if you do, you can't always share it, and you can't always delete it.</p>

<p>This is a complex field of law and it's easy to screw up in a way that would cause big, serious, company-destroying, job-ending problems for everyone involved.</p>

<p>To put this another way: this is absolutely, positively, not something you want to get advice on from strangers on the internet. You don't just need a lawyer; you need a HIPAA specialist--or the equivalent in whatever other countries you plan to operate in--before you push anything out to real-life patients, especially children.</p>
