RECOVERY Comprehensive Research on Re-identifying a HIPAA De-Identified Dataset

Recovery - Notice of Award. A notice was posted in FedBizOpps on January 4, 2010 to acquire a contractor to provide comprehensive research on re-identifying a HIPAA de-identified dataset or health information. This project is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and was competed amongst the NIH NITAAC ECSIII Contract Holders. This fixed-price award was made to NORC in the amount of $454,282.00.

The Government intends to solicit and award a task order contract to acquire services for the Office of the National Coordinator ONC. The purpose of this project is to acquire a contractor with in-depth knowledge of the Health Information Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) Privacy Rule and experience with conducting comprehensive research on re-identifying a HIPAA de-identified dataset. The Contractor shall take one or more HIPAA Privacy Rule de-identified data sets and, using methods and technologies that exclude "brute force" matching, demonstrate the ability or inability to re-identify the data. Re-identify means to accurately and unambiguously match the de-identified data record to an actual individual. It is important to note that the de-identification provision permits a covered entity to consider health information to be de-identified when it has removed all 18 identifiers and the covered entity does not have actual knowledge that the information could be used alone or in combination to identify the subject individual. Outcomes/Objectives of this project is prohibited from sharing or disseminating these data in either their de-identified form or in any transformed forms resulting from re-identification tests, and Providing a complete report of the results, including a thorough explanation of their methodology and, where applicable, computer software and laboratory notes.



This notice is for informational purposes as required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA-2009). No solicitation will be posted and capability statements are NOT being requested. Award of this task order will be through the DHHS Program Support Center Task Order Contracts. No additional information is available.