Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Personal Information. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Personal Information. Show all posts

Saturday, February 22, 2020

Hospitals Give Tech Giants Access to Detailed Medical Records

Melanie Evans
The Wall Street Journal
Originally published 20 Jan 20

Here is an excerpt:

Recent revelations that Alphabet Inc.’s Google is able to tap personally identifiable medical data about patients, reported by The Wall Street Journal, has raised concerns among lawmakers, patients and doctors about privacy.

The Journal also recently reported that Google has access to more records than first disclosed in a deal with the Mayo Clinic.

Mayo officials say the deal allows the Rochester, Minn., hospital system to share personal information, though it has no current plans to do so.

“It was not our intention to mislead the public,” said Cris Ross, Mayo’s chief information officer.

Dr. David Feinberg, head of Google Health, said Google is one of many companies with hospital agreements that allow the sharing of personally identifiable medical data to test products used in treatment and operations.

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Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft are vying for hospitals’ business in the cloud storage market in part by offering algorithms and technology features. To create and launch algorithms, tech companies are striking separate deals for access to medical-record data for research, development and product pilots.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, lets hospitals confidentially send data to business partners related to health insurance, medical devices and other services.

The law requires hospitals to notify patients about health-data uses, but they don’t have to ask for permission.

Data that can identify patients—including name and Social Security number—can’t be shared unless such records are needed for treatment, payment or hospital operations. Deals with tech companies to develop apps and algorithms can fall under these broad umbrellas. Hospitals aren’t required to notify patients of specific deals.

The info is here.

Friday, November 8, 2019

Privacy is a collective concern

Carissa Veliz
newstatesman.com
Originally published 22 OCT 2019

People often give a personal explanation of whether they protect the privacy of their data. Those who don’t care much about privacy might say that they have nothing to hide. Those who do worry about it might say that keeping their personal data safe protects them from being harmed by hackers or unscrupulous companies. Both positions assume that caring about and protecting one’s privacy is a personal matter. This is a common misunderstanding.

It’s easy to assume that because some data is “personal”, protecting it is a private matter. But privacy is both a personal and a collective affair, because data is rarely used on an individual basis.

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Because we are intertwined in ways that make us vulnerable to each other, we are responsible for each other’s privacy. I might, for instance, be extremely careful with my phone number and physical address. But if you have me as a contact in your mobile phone and then give access to companies to that phone, my privacy will be at risk regardless of the precautions I have taken. This is why you shouldn’t store more sensitive data than necessary in your address book, post photos of others without their permission, or even expose your own privacy unnecessarily. When you expose information about yourself, you are almost always exposing information about others.

The info is here.

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Ethics In The Digital Age: Protect Others' Data As You Would Your Own

uncaptionedJeff Thomson
Forbes.com
Originally posted July 1, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

2. Ensure they are using people’s data with their consent. 

In theory, an increasing amount of rights to data use is willingly signed over by people through digital acceptance of privacy policies. But a recent investigation by the European Commission, following up on the impact of GDPR, indicated that corporate privacy policies remain too difficult for consumers to understand or even read. When analyzing the ethics of using data, finance professionals must personally reflect on whether the way information is being used is consistent with how consumers, clients or employees understand and expect it to be used. Furthermore, they should question if data is being used in a way that is necessary for achieving business goals in an ethical manner.

3. Follow the “golden rule” when it comes to data. 

Finally, finance professionals must reflect on whether they would want their own personal information being used to further business goals in the way that they are helping their organization use the data of others. This goes beyond regulations and the fine print of privacy agreements: it is adherence to the ancient, universal standard of refusing to do to other people what you would not want done to yourself. Admittedly, this is subjective and difficult to define. But finance professionals will be confronted with many situations in which there are no clear answers, and they must have the ability to think about the ethical implications of actions that might not necessarily be illegal.

The info is here.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Privacy and Information Technology

By Jeroen van den Hoven, Martijn Blaauw, Wolter Pieters, and Martijn Warnier
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

Human beings value their privacy and the protection of their personal sphere of life. They value some control over who knows what about them. They certainly do not want their personal information to be accessible to just anyone at any time. But recent advances in information technology threaten privacy and have reduced the amount of control over personal data and open up the possibility of a range of negative consequences as a result of access to personal data. The 21st century has become the century of Big Data and advanced Information Technology allows for the storage and processing of exabytes of data. The revelations of Edward Snowden have demonstrated that these worries are real and that the technical capabilities to collect, store and search large quantities of data concerning telephone conversations, internet searches and electronic payment are now in place and are routinely used by government agencies. For business firms, personal data about customers and potential customers are now also a key asset. At the same time, the meaning and value of privacy remains the subject of considerable controversy. The combination of increasing power of new technology and the declining clarity and agreement on privacy give rise to problems concerning law, policy and ethics. The focus of this article is on exploring the relationship between information technology (IT) and privacy. We will both illustrate the specific threats that IT and innovations in IT pose for privacy, and indicate how IT itself might be able to overcome these privacy concerns by being developed in a ‘privacy-sensitive way’. We will also discuss the role of emerging technologies in the debate, and account for the way in which moral debates are themselves affected by IT.

The entire entry is here.

Monday, September 22, 2014

Full disclosure

Do individuals have a right for their medical records to remain private after death, or can public interest prevail?

By Jack El-Hai
Aeon
Originally published September 1, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

Putting aside my thoughts on whether Göring deserved any common courtesies and consideration, I explained to the questioner that I’m not a medical provider, and I do not have to follow the ethics of another profession that places a premium on the privacy of patients, living or dead. I have never sworn by the Hippocratic Oath in all my years as a writer. Furthermore, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, a federal US law that regulates the disposition of medical records and protects the privacy of patients, applies to hospitals, medical providers and insurers – but not to writers. Even if it did apply to writers, HIPAA’s privacy protections last for only 50 years past a patient’s death, making the records of Göring and most of his fellow Nazi defendants clearly free from any restrictions on their use.

‘Don’t private medical records deserve more permanent protections?’ my questioner persisted.

The entire article is here.

Monday, July 9, 2012

MD Anderson suffers data breach via stolen computer

By Beth Walsh
CMIO - Industry News
Originally published July 2, 2012

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center announced that a computer containing patient and research information was stolen from a physician’s home on April 30. The physician notified the local police department.

After learning of the theft on May 1, MD Anderson immediately began a thorough investigation, including working with outside forensics experts, to determine the information contained on the computer.

The entire story is here.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Patient ID information stolen at Memorial hospitals

by Bob LaMendola and Donna Gehrke-White
Florida Sun-Sentinel
Originally published on April 13, 2012

Patients of Memorial hospitals in south Broward County had their identities stolen by employees who wanted to use the information to make money filing phony tax returns, Memorial officials said Thursday.

Two employees have been fired and are under criminal investigation by federal agents for improperly gaining access to the patients' information, said Kerting Baldwin, a spokeswoman for tax-assisted Memorial Healthcare System, parent of five Memorial hospitals.

Memorial sent letters Thursday to about 9,500 patients whose identities may have been exposed by the two employees.

The entire story is here.

Thanks to Ken Pope for this information.

Security breach at North Shore Univ. Hospital

By Sarah Wallace
WABC-TV New York
Originally published on April 11, 2012

Eyewitness News has an exclusive investigation into a major security breach at one of the area's largest hospitals.


Eyewitness News has learned that patients at North Shore University Hospital have been notified that their private health records, including social security numbers and insurance information, have been stolen.
New York State Police are saying this is an ongoing and widespread probe.

The entire story is here.

Thanks to Ken Pope for this information.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Sensitive personal information missing on 800,000 California residents

By Steven Harmon
Mercurynews.com
Originally published March 29, 2012

In a puzzling breach of security, computer storage devices containing identification information of 800,000 Californians using the state's child support services have disappeared.

The Department of Child Support Services reported Thursday the data devices were lost March 12 en route to California from the Colorado facilities of IBM, one of the contractors in charge of the storage devices.

Authorities have begun to notify customers by mail about the incident, warning them that the devices include names, addresses, Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, names of health insurance providers and employers.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Children’s hospital loses personal info of 500,000 patients


wftv.com

In a potential security breach at Nemours Children’s Health System, officials say they have lost the personal information of thousands of Florida patients.

Company officials say the patient information was being stored in a filing cabinet at a facility in Delaware. Officials said inside the cabinet were nonpassword protected computer backup tapes containing the personal and financial information of 500,000 Florida patients.

The whole story and video can be found here.