In today’s day and age the issue of privacy has become an essential one that we deal with on a day to day basis. We meet concerns with privacy in all walks of life. Daniel J. Solove has said in an essay entitled Conceptualizing Privacy,
“Privacy is a sweeping concept encompassing among other things freedom of thought, control over one’s body, solitude in one’s body, solitude in one’s home, control over information about oneself, freedom from surveillance, protection of one’s reputation, and protection from searches and interrogations”.
Clearly this is the case with Patient Privacy distress that I have been researching.
Noting that Patient Privacy is an enormously potent issue has been something I clearly demonstrated throughout this travelogue. I don’t think that anyone would argue that patient records on the web whether it be through Google health, Microsoft health vault, the Zuri, or any other mode of Internet health records is one hundred percent of a positive thing. However, as with anything else in life it does have both its positive and negative attributes. Therefore, before ending this third travelogue I find it extremely necessary to explore both the advantages and disadvantages that come along with patient health records on the web.
The advantages that I could think of are these:
- A Patient can monitor all of his records with ease constantly having them at his disposal. He could to some extent monitor his doctor’s accuracy.
- All of your records can travel with you. If you become ill or have some sort of accident while your on a vacation both you and your out of town doctor will have your records within moments.
- Online Health records are all http which are supposedly private (assuming there are no problems)
The disadvantages I have obviously come across lie in the issue of privacy. Here is some prime examples to highlight just how grave the issue is.
1. Despite online health sites being http’ s according to Amanda Angelotti, a spokeswoman for Google Health, they are not entirely secure. She says,
“In some sense, no one can ever really know about the data they hand over, whether it’s financial data or medical data or anything else…In some sense you can never be truly protected.”
And she is quite right. While doing research for a story she was writing, Elizabeth Cohen a CNN correspondent was surprised to discover her entire medical history on the web. There on her health insurance company’s website were her annual mammograms, the visits to the podiatrist for the splinter in her foot, the kind of birth control she uses and the prescription drugs she uses.
Both Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault promise not to sell or disclose any of your information unless it can legally alleviate them from any issues with the law. Specifically on the site for Microsoft Health Vault it says
“the company may disclose a user’s personal information to comply with the law, to protect the “personal safety” of members of the public, or to defend the rights of Microsoft.”
To conclude:
I think that eventually as with any other form of new media the majority of us will fall into the trap and use this system for convenience. However, this travelogue has taught me the importance in truly asking questions and exploring the system your are about to hand your information over to (as we should willingly think about when it comes to google in general as well).
