FAQ: Who is this guy?

For more than 30 years, Dennis Melamed has written about business and
regulatory affairs from the Washington, DC area. In 1989, he established
Melamedia, which assisted newsletter and trade magazine publishers in
starting new publications and providing editorial content in areas including
biomedical and health regulation, intellectual property, environment and
energy policy, industrial construction and manufacturing automation.

For reasons we can only guess, in 1997, Dennis decided that Melamedia
would start publishing its own newsletters and started Health Information
Privacy/Security Alert. The newsletter came in response to the issues and
challenges facing the healthcare industry because of the HIPAA Administrative
Simplification provisions.

Because of his experience in other industries, Dennis made Health Information
Privacy/Security Alert a publication that examines not only the HIPAA privacy
and security rules, but regulations and practices in other industries that affect
healthcare. Little did he know where that would lead once he started traveling
down that road.

For the past 15 years, he has produced and sponsored dozens of compliance
seminars on data stewardship and issues confronting clinical trials research.

In the last five years, he has provided research and consulting services for a
wide variety of organizations, including the National Governors Association's
State Alliance for E-Health. (We will get back to his consulting in a moment.)

He was the lead editor and writer for URAC's three-volume HIPAA Handbook
reference set that explains - in English - the privacy, security and electronic
transaction rules. For those of you in the know, he actually read the implementation
guidelines. He thought the diagrams were pretty.

In 2002, Dennis started Drug & Biologic Guidance Watch, a low-cost weekly
email service that tracks biomedical regulations and guidance documents from
more than 40 countries. Ever practical, Dennis felt that the biomedical industry
needed a tool that provided direct access to the primary documents that govern
its activities without paying a fortune for the information.

However, Dennis is careful not to say that the cost of trade publications is one
reason drug prices have risen so dramatically in recent years.

Dennis also had his encounter with the Internet bubble when he co-founded
PrivacySecurityNetwork.com, an early Internet resource for HIPAA compliance and
related topics. For more on that, call him and hear him change the topic.

He is a frequent lecturer on HIPAA and other business and regulatory issues. He
has spoken before the Drug Information Association, URAC, the Texas Association
of Health Plans, HIPAA Summit 2, World Health Innovation Conference, and the
Friends of the National Library of Medicine, to name a few.

Whether anyone listened is another matter.

Speaking of lecturing, Dennis is an adjunct professor within the Drexel University
College of Medicine, where he lectures on patient data stewardship issues and
regulatory affairs affecting the pharmaceutical industry.

Prior to 1989, Dennis was a Washington correspondent for Business Week where
he was a general assignment reporter.

His work has been published in a variety of other national publications, including
American History Magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, Newsday, Congressional
Quarterly's Governing Magazine and even American Airlines in-flight magazine.

None of the articles were made into movies, and he still has no film credits.

In the 1980s, Dennis served a stint as a congressional staffer for a nonpartisan
congressional caucus. When we say nonpartisan, we mean that both Ted Kennedy
and Jesse Helms were members at the same time. But that seems like a long long
long time ago.

Being in Washington, of course Dennis served as a regulatory affairs consultant
and contributing author for projects sponsored by the National Governors Association,
Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the Calvert Social Investment
Foundation. He firmly denies all responsibility for the dust bunnies that were born
from those separate reports on U.S. research spending and regulatory policy
development and data stewardship.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Dennis served his time as a member of the board
and ultimately as Vice Chairman of the Board of the National Press Club. He no
longer suffers flashbacks.

Dennis received his undergraduate degree in Government from the College of William
and Mary. The Pennsylvania State University strongly encouraged Dennis to leave and
pursue his career in Washington after he received his Master's Degree in Journalism.

His favorite websites are the Federal Register and Despair.com.

Draw your own conclusions.

He has no food allergies that he is aware of.

Dennis has done other things but insisted that you know enough already.