Protecting confidential information about patients has always been held to be an essential component of medical practice. As we move to aggregate medical records in digital form, the risk of a third party acquiring confidential information about a collection of patients has increased exponentially. The HIPAA regulations require electronic medical records that contain enough information to identify unique patients to be specially protected. These are:-

  • Name
  • Address (all geographic subdivisions smaller than state, including street address, city county, and zip code)
  • All elements (except years) of dates related to an individual (including birthdate, admission date, discharge date, date of death, and exact age if over 89)
  • Telephone numbers
  • Fax number
  • Email address
  • Social Security Number
  • Medical record number
  • Health plan beneficiary number
  • Account number
  • Certificate or licence number
  • Any vehicle or other device serial number
  • Web URL
  • Internet Protocol (IP) Address
  • Finger or voice print
  • Photographic image – Photographic images are not limited to images of the face.
  • Any other characteristic that could uniquely identify the individual

LexeNotes stores and regenerates a stream of lexemes, or stock phrases, that cannot contain patient identifiers. The LexeNotes stores this stream with a scrambled note-identifier that can be added to the end of the note, and lodged in your EMR. A third party who acquired this stored note would not be able to deduce the patient’s identity without gaining entry to the your EMR. Because it cannot store any HIPPA patient identifier, we feel that LexeNotes is not likely to compromise any patient’s confidentially.