NHS open data plans ‘death of privacy’
Rebecca Todd, e-Health Insider Acute
“Privacy groups say a government plan to share anonymised NHS data with commercial companies will herald the “death of patient confidentiality”.
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Confidentiality
Patients’ NHS records could be shared with private firms
BBC News
“Healthcare companies could be given access to anonymous NHS patient records and other NHS data under new plans.
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Ethical and Legal Aspects of Telemedicine and Remote Consultation
Salil Garg, Mudit Mathur, Express Healthcare
“Cyberspace is a fast-changing, globally-networked, multicultural, and multilingual information environment with vast possibilities. It calls into question, national and international borders, cultural and ethical standards, regulations, and laws, which it bypasses and challenges.
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Survey: U.K. patients demand security for their records
Jeff Byers, CMIO
“Findings of a survey from healthcare privacy auditing supplier FairWarning found a demand for patients’ medical records to be guaranteed against data theft and snooping.
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80% of Americans worry about EHR privacy
Marla Durben Hirsch, FierceEMR
“A majority of Americans believe that electronic health records don’t keep their medical records confidential, according to a new survey released by security firm SailPoint.
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Genomics, Health Care, and Society
Hudson KL. N Engl J Med, 365(11)
A new generation of genomic technologies permits the increased collection of data on large study populations. New methods in informatics facilitate the integration of diverse types of information with genomic data in disease research. As a result, researchers are learning more about the genetic bases of disease and response to drugs.
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Patient control of data seen as within reach
Joseph Conn, ModernHealthcare
“The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology is asking as many questions as it is giving directives in its unusual “advance notice” of proposed rule making (PDF) regarding some of the recommendations for health information exchange issued late last year by a White House advisory panel.
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Encryption and the loss of patient data
Miller AR, Tucker CE. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 30(3)
Fast-paced IT advances have made it increasingly possible and useful for firms to collect data on their customers on an unprecedented scale. One downside of this is that firms can experience negative publicity and financial damage if their data are breached. This is particularly the case in the medical sector, where we find empirical evidence that increased digitization of patient data is associated with more data breaches. The encryption of customer data is often presented as a potential solution, because encryption acts as a disincentive for potential malicious hackers, and can minimize the risk of breached data being put to malicious use.
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Intelligent security and privacy solutions for enabling personalized telepathology
Blobel B. Diagnostic Pathology, 6 Suppl 1
Starting with the paradigm change of health systems towards personalized health services, the paper introduces the technical paradigms to be met for enabling ubiquitous pHealth including ePathology. The system-theoretical, architecture-centric approach to mobile, pervasive and autonomous solutions has to be based on an open component system framework such as the Generic Component Model.
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Social media and the medical profession
Mansfield SJ et al, The Medical Journal of Australia, 194(12)
- Use of social media by doctors and medical students is common and growing.
- Although professional standards and codes of ethics that govern the behaviour of medical practitioners in Australia and New Zealand do not currently encompass social media, these codes need to evolve, because professional standards continue to apply in this setting.
- Inappropriate use of social media can result in harm to patients and the profession, including breaches of confidentiality, defamation of colleagues or employers, and violation of doctor–patient boundaries.
Mobile health offers hope to patients in Africa
Alex Duval Smith, guardian.co.uk
“Experts gathered for Africa’s first mobile health summit on Tuesday hailed the use of phone technology as a new frontier in improving patient care in poor countries. But a government minister in South Africa, which is hosting the summit, called for caution over issues of regulation, confidentiality and cost to patients.
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Audit finds hospital EMRs vulnerable to data breaches
Charles Fiegl, amednews
“Efforts to launch electronic medical records in hospitals have proceeded without ensuring that proper data safeguards are in place, according to two reports from the Dept. of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General.
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Why many eHealth projects fail
3gdoctor, mHealth Insight
“I’ve just watched this interesting video of Lucien Engelen sharing his ideas at last months TEDxMaastricht and I can’t help think the problem is more fundamental than he suggests.
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Giving government access to patient records could put confidentiality at risk
Gail Johnson, Straight.com
“A recent Canadian Medical Association news bulletin reported that the highly centralized EHR model that Infoway has adopted was largely discredited and discarded in the United Kingdom.
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A matter of privacy
BattleCreekEnquirer
“The shift to electronic health records is expected to play a major role in reducing both medical errors and health-care costs in the years ahead. Our community is fortunate in that Battle Creek Health System and other area providers are ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting paperless records systems.
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Facebook friend request from a patient?
Devi S. The Lancet, 377(9772)
Widespread use of new technologies such as social networking sites are creating ethical problems for physicians that some doctors’ organisations are beginning to address. Sharmila Devi reports.
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Legal, Ethical, and Financial Dilemmas in Electronic Health Record Adoption and Use
Sittig DF, Singh H. Pediatrics, 2011
Electronic health records (EHRs) facilitate several innovations capable of reforming health care. Despite their promise, many currently unanswered legal, ethical, and financial questions threaten the widespread adoption and use of EHRs. Key legal dilemmas that must be addressed in the near-term pertain to the extent of clinicians’ responsibilities for reviewing the entire computer-accessible clinical synopsis from multiple clinicians and institutions, the liabilities posed by overriding clinical decision support warnings and alerts, and mechanisms for clinicians to publically report potential EHR safety issues. Ethical dilemmas that need additional discussion relate to opt-out provisions that exclude patients from electronic record storage, sale of deidentified patient data by EHR vendors, adolescent control of access to their data, and use of electronic data repositories to redesign the nation’s health care delivery and payment mechanisms on the basis of statistical analyses.
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Eerste Kamer in de fout met afwijzen EPD
Jan de Boer en Ronald Koorn, Financieel Dagblad
“In de maatschappelijke discussie over het EPD domineren privacy en beveiliging. Bij beveiliging staan drie kwaliteitsaspecten centraal: vertrouwelijkheid, integriteit en continuïteit. De discussie wordt nu volledig gedomineerd door het aspect vertrouwelijkheid. Uiteraard is het cruciaal dat de toegang, gegevensuitwisseling en -opslag zeer goed zijn beveiligd.
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Using NHS Patient Data for Research Without Consent
Brown I et al,
This article analyses the legality of the use of electronic patient records in the NHS for research without explicit patient consent under UK and EU law, with particular reference to the adequacy of the information provided to patients and the increasing difficulties of achieving de-identification. In section II, we describe the main NHS databases used for medical research purposes in England and the transparency of this use, and the general problem of re-identification.
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GPs told to secure web data
Fiona Barr, e-Health Insider Primary Care
“GP representatives have warned doctors to check the confidentiality of patient data submitted when patients use online services on practice websites.
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