Your Medical History on the Web
Friday May 2, 2008
If you have ever switched doctors or dentists, you know what pain in the butt it can be to get your records transferred. If you have ever had to deal with multiple doctors at the same time, you are probably also familiar with the complexity of sharing information between doctors to ensure continuity of service and make sure there are no conflcts or interactions between the different treatment plans. What if all of your medical information was available via the Web? You could view it conveniently from any web browser. Your doctors could view it conveniently from any web browser. Could the data be accidentally leaked? Could an attacker view the data? Would anyone be held responsible if it were? Well, both Google and Microsoft are testing iniatives to let users place medical information on the Web. They are each aware that security is a major concern, and they are working on ways to protect the data, however because they are not in the "health care industry", they are not bound by HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accessability Act) restrictions or penalties regarding patient data. Eric Larkin talks about some of the pros and cons of these initiatives in Should You Trust Your Health Records to Google and Microsoft?
Comments
Convenient? No, there is no reason for medical records to be on the internet. Of course hackers will find them. But I don’t want every little clerk in every office that has a contractual relationship with my MCO to have access to anything concerning me. Erecords are not for my convenience - they exist to save money and time (money) for providers. Presenting this issue as if it were helpful to consumers is wrong.
The above comment is correct. The answer to this question for anyone who knows anything about the ‘net is simple. NO!!! The sad part is, once this is made available publicly (and it’s GOING to be–Google and/or Microsoft will ‘make’ this work–of course, by their OWN definitions of the word ‘work’) millions of robots in human skin will put their records on the web (echoing the “convenience” argument they’ve been fed all the way), thus making it possible for medical providers to refuse to provide care to anyone who refuses this “convenience”.