The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a law that was passed in 1996, designed primarily to modernize the flow of health information. At the time, most medical records were in paper form, but it was becoming clear that health data would become digital in the future.
Telford and Heidi Goethert, J93, a microbiologist at the Cummings School, sequenced the spirochete DNA, and identified it as Borrelia miyamotoi, which was first found in ticks in Japan in 1995 and is closely related to the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.
Japanese B Encephalitis is contracted through the bite of a mosquito. These mosquitoes are normally found in rice paddles, as well as on pigs, birds and the Siberian stork. Japanese B Encephalitis sometimes exhibits no symptoms, although some people experience fever, encephalitis, meningitis and paralysis. Recovery is slow and long-term debility is common.