On the Internet ALL your health searches about scary and stigmatizing illnesses, all searches or purchases of books on health, and all searches or purchases of medications and devices are tracked and sold.
It is impossible to search for health information privately via Google, etc.
Health websites take massive advantage of Americans' powerful expectations that ALL healthcare providers put their interests and their privacy first---expectations which come from the traditional doctor-patient relationship and the ethics that have governed Medicine for 2,400 years (derived from the Hippocratic Oath).
Americans are not yet ready to believe that every aspect of healthcare in the US is profit-driven, rather than driven by the ethical codes all health professionals swear to at graduation: the promises to "do no harm" and to "guard their secrets".
Americans are not yet ready to believe that Wall Street has taken over Medicine---and that instead of guaranteeing the strong health privacy rights Americans have under the law, Wall Street erases our rights to ensure shareholder profits.
View this story in the NY Times: Ads Follow Web Users, and Get More Personal
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Security and Hacking, Real Fears
See the WSJ Article: New Epidemic Fears: Hackers
Securing health records in small doctor's offices and clinics is not easy: small offices can't afford Fort-Knox style data protection measures, like hiring security experts to make sure hackers aren’t getting into their systems. Even if electronic health records software includes encryption and other security features doesn't mean those features will be turned on and used.
• Now, many privacy advocates are concerned the administration's effort could end up making health information less secure. "If there isn't a concerted effort to acknowledge that the security risks are very real and very serious then we could end up doing it wrong," says Avi Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
• "As more information is shared, it is subjected to the weak-link effect."
• Mr. Osteen's efforts to safeguard information won't be useful if smaller providers he shares it with haven't made the same kind of security investments."
Securing health records in small doctor's offices and clinics is not easy: small offices can't afford Fort-Knox style data protection measures, like hiring security experts to make sure hackers aren’t getting into their systems. Even if electronic health records software includes encryption and other security features doesn't mean those features will be turned on and used.
• Now, many privacy advocates are concerned the administration's effort could end up making health information less secure. "If there isn't a concerted effort to acknowledge that the security risks are very real and very serious then we could end up doing it wrong," says Avi Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
• "As more information is shared, it is subjected to the weak-link effect."
• Mr. Osteen's efforts to safeguard information won't be useful if smaller providers he shares it with haven't made the same kind of security investments."
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