Comments on: Taking your health records online

roundup Many companies are working on efforts to make patients' medical records available on the Internet.

[inachu1]

Oh I know for a fact these records will be accidently viewable with no encryption that some admin forgot to encrypt or forgot how to properly configure a firewall. This is an accident waiting to happen and those who will be wanting to view them are insurance companies waiting for a reason to cancel someones coverage. Hackers hired by insurance companies.... I that would be the proper way to describe it.

[skswave]

Perhaps all of these systems should be required to support multi-factor hardware authentication. With Trusted platform modules available on many PC platforms this technology can be very inexpensive for the user. It will take time and energy to educate the population at large but it will dramatically improve access control and that is a good thing. Authentication is not a silver bullet but it is a really important piece of the puzzle. Binding users access to their home PC or at least a token should be required but at a minimum should be a legislated option.

Steven Sprague

[StretchCunningham]

Don't blog about it. Go out and sell it. Don't you owe that to your investors?

[Greg5A]

Good luck! If health-care records go online, someone for sure will hack into them, and we will be reading stories about thousands of records being compromised, etc.

We see this stuff about the lack of security for records constantly. Banks, credit cards--whatever is out there seems to be game for the bad guys.

[Geek_Lady]

Well, it will certainly give a boost to the legal profession because everyone will be suing their doctors and hospitals for the breach of HIPAA. Someone will sell the data to companies that want to market to a particular group, like diabetics, or for obesity or worse. I can just imagine, not only dealing with the heartbreak of not being able to conceive, but also the slap-in-the-face of opening your morning e-mail to read, "Hello Mrs. Smith! We understand you cannot produce a single egg! Our product..."

[DRPerson]

During the last 3 years, my personal information has been compromised. Once by a former employer where the laptop with all HR information was stored, was stolen from an employee's desk!!! Then the next was from a large company that keeps track of my stocks, splits, dividends, etc. In both cases, ALL of my personal information, (soc sec #, next of kin, etc.) was stolen. There is no way that we can thoroughly secure electronic medical records over the Internet if we cannot even secure the data at a single company. My medical information is personal and confidential, not only because I do not think it is anyone's business, but because it is also legislated by law. Enacting electronic storage of such records over the Internet would NOT be used for its purpose, which is supposed to save lives. Instead, it will be used against us, eliminating us from getting health insurance (unless we are work for a company that provides it), and it will eventually be used to eliminate us from getting jobs, since potential employers will find some way to access the system. Once you step into the arena of accessing medical records from any source, you then open up the system to additional legislation. If you look at legislation, opening up a hole, so to speak, leads to the hole getting larger and larger with the information being used for other uses. These uses will give each person less control over who has access to their records and will give current and potential employers, all types of doctors, insurance companies, etc. more control over who gets medical care and who does not. And they will also use it to typecast patients....once you have a dependency problem, you always have a dependency problem, etc.

[mark1214]

I guess that's what they mean by Universal Healthcare (A.K.A.-Socialized Medicine)...our health records will be available universally. So the integrity of the healthcare system will be in the hands of some government bureaucrat. What happened to patients' rights?

[dadsgravy]

What's so wrong with you people that you're trying to hide it? If you were never denied health care, never charged, an employer couldn't fire you because of your health, as long as you can preform the job, then who cares?
Oh, I guess the american health care system. Good luck sicko's .

[TAC13]

Are you sure your not sick dadsgravy?? It is not that people want to hide, it is a confidentiality that we need to uphold but I suppose with an attitude like yours, you won't ever get sick or lose a job or need to renew with a different insurance company. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, falling ill or being tied to a perscription. I have observed in real life that people who are so cocky usually get theirs in the end so, good luck and good health to you my friend and just in case, God Bless!

[dadsgravy]

There would never be anything wrong with me a snub nose .357 couldn't take care of. I don't cling desperately to my existence, but I do live life full and sweet. I see no reason to "live" pumped full of the white mans medicine. Or at the mercy and extortion of insurance companies.

Enjoy your old age, full of drugs worse then anything you can find on the street, mountains of medical debt and people that just wish you'd die. Hope you are a good worker, so your means can find a righteous end.

[lyntone]

If our health records go on the web, it is because the insurance lobbyist have successfully bribed our politicians!! .....Then what every body has said will happen! Think about how the politicians has sold out this nation in the last 30 years, like sending our factories and the wealth of this country to Communist China! Looting the treasury and giving ALL the money to Wall Street and bank buddies. Both Bushes and Clinton have sold us out!......Not to mention Reagan! We were once a great capitalist nation, but now we have to borrow from a communist country, thanks to those bozo politicians We are now a third rate nation! Just look at all the money these past presidents have gotten after they leave office. They would have us believe they got it from speeches and selling books and consultant fees!
We have been sold out!

[hackingbear]

I have seen plenty of doctors. I have never understood why medical records are the keys to affordable health care. some low paying assistant pulls out your chart and the doctor looks at it for 1 minute when seeing you. In most places in the world, patients just carry their medical records around and that works pretty well. People have to be responsible for their own things! (Here in the US, doctors don't automatically give you access to your own record unless you make a formal request.) Putting these records in electronic or online forms seem to make thing harder and more expensive to access for everyone.

It is just another marketing gimmick trying to solve non-existent problem by making it more expensive.

Affordable health care means:
- doctor stop charging $500 for 5 minute of exam without giving any treatment.
- And hospitals stop charging $10,000 for one night staying in the room receiving nothing but salt water through IV.
- build more medical schools and train a lot more doctors and nurse -- that solves the unemployment. problem as well; more supply, low costs
- And of course, lower mal-practice claims to not more than $1-2m, so new doctors can practice for a living.

[GEBERWEIN]

Folks can moan all they want, threaten with loaded guns to their heads or refuse to grant permissions for this to happen. It will all be of no avail. President Obama will see to it that this will happen. He has already said so.

The words, if I remember them, were 'The medical records of all Americans will be available electronically by the end of 2010.' Immediately thereafter there were e-mail announcements to ceratin states of 'trial' periods where you could sign up for your records to be included. But, all Medicare Records will be included by the end of 2010. There it is America.

If you have any Government Medical Coverage of any variety or level you will be in the electrronic medical records system. Even the doctors will probably be browbeat into submission on this one. Let me see; it'll be like this, "If you want to be able to see Medicare patients or any other patients who receive any form of government supplied medical care you will go electronic with your records."

Dadsgravy is one of the rare ones that walks on water. His tirade about whiteman's medicine tends to meake me think he should be concerned over this as the BIA is a government agency and their records will be in this pile - bet on that.

It will not take long for the Congress to enact laws to require states that get funds for Medicaid substitute progrrams to include persons that receive medical servces from those federally subsidized programs into the 'system.'

It's coming Barrak and Nancy will see to it.
They're going to take care of us - they said so.

BTW - I also have a big bridge in New York City (Between Brooklyn and Manhattan that I'll sell you for very littie down and the rest financed by AIG.

[walwebster]

When you're unconcscious and out of town and (let's say) at death's door, you'll be very grateful for your medical attendants having access to your health records. Or alternatively, possibly in no condition to feel anything about anything ...

"Taking your health records online"? Hell, I want my health records ON BOARD -- let's cut out all these middle-men points-of-failure, circling like vultures for their piece of a potentially very lucrative new industry for very little effort. Give me an embedded chip, and I'll be more than happy to take responsibility for my own health records, and to tell anybody else who wants a piece of their management where to get off.