The San Diego Union-Tribune, in a March 5 article, reported on the Health 2.0 Conference recently held in San Diego, which showcased the latest interactive health care offerings on the Internet, including systems which allow an individual to post their personal health record (PHR) online. Both Google, with its upcoming Google Health, and Microsoft, with its upcoming HealthVault, figure to be major players in the PHR business. To show the downside of PHR’s , the article also referred to a February 20 report by the San Diego based World Privacy Forum which determined that the posting of a PHR was a genuine threat to an individual’s privacy.

The San Diego Union-Tribune article said that the Health 2.0 Conference did not even list privacy and security matters on its program, which is fairly surprising to me - ignore the issues and they go away? The World Privacy Forum was quoted as saying in their report, “Any consumer worried about the privacy of personal health information should proceed with great caution before agreeing to sign up for a (personal health record)”. This is because most health care websites are not covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA), the federal law that requires health care providers to protect the privacy of an individual’s health record. Pam Dixon, the Forum’s executive director, expressed concern that an insurance company might use an individual’s online PHR to turn down their application for coverage. And that’s only one of the many privacy concerns.

For a detailed description of the different kinds of PHR systems, what determines whether or not the system vendor is covered under HIPPA, and all the privacy issues involved, see the World Privacy Forum report.

Submitted by: Alice McCreary, Reference Librarian
on March 06, 2008 - 3:27 pm

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