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Health Care: Privacy worries Grow about On-line Health Care Records
In late February, Google jumped into the new world of storing personal health records on-line. Their new service called Google Health is free. A pilot project is on-going at the Cleveland Clinic and may involve up to 10,000 users who will volunteer for the convenience of having their medical histories on-line and within easy access.
The information stored would include prescriptions, allergies and medical histories. Access to the data is similar to having an web-based email account. Google sees the new service as an extension to the many queries that they service every day when people search for information about health, injury, and illnesses.
Microsoft beat Google to the market with their HealthVault service in October last year. Steve Case of AOL fame is behind a similar service called Revolution Health.
While these services offer convenience and are a glimpse of the direction that personal records management is going, there is considerable concern about privacy. These new services are not covered by HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). While the services themselves may have no direct intention of snooping, the worry is primarily that some third party, primarily government or legal entities will get ahold of the information. And you have to think that Google probably has some plan for how they might be able to monetize this free service via marketing and advertising.
Jon Udell suggests that the only way these kind of on-line services will be trustable is when they can devise a way so that all information that is stored is encrypted and can only be decrypted and read by the owner. He calls them ‘translucent’ storage.
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