Are HIPAA rules impeding medical research?

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Health-Record Privacy Impeding Medical Research
[Health records] have been sealed since 1996, when the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was signed into law to protect the privacy of personal health records. That protection applies not only to the charts of the living or recently deceased, but also to records dating to the 1700s and 1800s. Which poses a problem for historians and researchers such as Segesser, who say the public is being denied important information that could help guide current health care practices and policies (Dribben, 3/13).