In hearings Monday and Wednesday, respectively, the state Senate and Assembly Appropriations committees briefly considered proposed laws in the areas of health information technology, automated decision systems, genetic data and personal information on mobility devices — then moved to hold the bills in suspension due to their potential cost, estimated to be $50,000 or more. The state Senate Appropriations Committee will reconsider advancing bills in suspension on May 20 after its regular session; the state Assembly Appropriations Committee will do so the same week, but it’s not yet known what day. Among the takeaways:
- Senate Bill 371, from Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Salinas, aims at improving equitable access to health-care services by creating a deputy secretary for health information technology position in the California Health and Human Services Agency (CHHS), to act as a “single point of contact for health information technology programs that interact with the state government” and to coordinate with federal agencies. The deputy secretary would also spearhead creation of a California Health Information Technology Advisory Committee to advise CHHS on health information technology issues and create a plan by July 1, 2022, to “use federal funding to promote data exchange.” The bill would require that any federal funds CHHS receives for health information technology and exchange to go into the California Health Information Technology and Exchange Fund, to provide “grants to health-care providers to implement or expand health information technology and to contract for direct data exchange technical assistance for safety net providers.” It would also require health information organizations to be connected to the California Trusted Exchange Network and to a “qualified national network.”
“If SB 371 passes the Legislature and is signed by the governor, California is going to retake the lead on the spread of health information exchange,” Caballero’s office told Techwire via email. “More physicians — especially those in small practices — will be exchanging health data across multiple platforms and using new technologies. All of this will create new opportunities for health IT vendors to engage physicians and their patients in innovative ways.” - Assembly Bill 13, from Assemblymember Ed Chau, D-Monterey Park, would create the Automated Decision Systems Accountability Act of 2021 and indicate the Legislature’s intent that “state agencies use an acquisition method that minimizes the risk of adverse and discriminatory impacts resulting from the design and application of automated decision systems.” AB 13 would define “automated decision system” as “a computational process, including one derived from machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or artificial intelligence, that issues a score, classification, recommendation, or other simplified output that is used to support or replace human decision-making and materially impacts” people. It would require goods or services contracts for the use, license or development of “an automated decision system for a high-risk application” to be founded on the proposal that brings the state “the most value-effective solution. It also would require that bid responses include “an automated decision system impact assessment” that would “help assess risks posed to the privacy or security of personal information ... .” The California Department of Technology would be required to set public guidelines for identifying systems that would be subject to the bill. Local agencies would be authorized to also require the impact assessments as part of a bid response.
- AB 859, co-authored by Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks, and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Berkeley, would authorize a public agency — a state or local entity issuing permits or regulating “mobility services” operators — to require operators to periodically submit anonymized trip data; and authorizes the public agencies to share anonymized trip data with a contractor, agent or other public agency only if certain conditions are met, including that the information is being shared to assist the entity in “transportation planning, integration of mobility options and road safety.” It would apply to all rental mobility devices including e-scooters, e-bikes, ride-share and potentially future autonomous vehicles. The bill would “enforce limits on state and local government’s ability to compel mobility data from micro-mobility companies,” Irwin’s office said when it was reintroduced in February.
“Just because it’s convenient for the transportation agencies, there’s no ... legal reason that they should have it. If they really need it, what we were offering is de-identified information and operational information,” Irwin told Techwire recently. - AB 825, from Assemblymember Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, would build on the Information Practices Act of 1977, which requires agencies that own or license “computerized data” to disclose system security breaches to residents whose personal information was compromised. The bill would specify that personal information includes “an individual’s genetic tests, the genetic tests of family members of an individual, or the manifestation of a disease or disorder in family members of the individual” resulting from the analysis of a biological sample or other source. It would also establish new requirements for local agencies.
