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Chapter 20
National Patient Identifier
andPatient Privacy in
theDigitalEra
Tim Godlove and Adrian Ball
Information cannot be shared among health care providers if systems are not interoperable. e
current lack of standardized technology not only prevents integration and interoperability of
information systems but also severely limits the ability of electronic health records, often referred
to as EHRs, to safely facilitate continuous, informed care across health care settings. In other
words, health care information systems need to talk to one another.
Assigning everyone a universal patient identifier, or UPI, would improve a doctor’s abili