Author: Dissent

Eight University Hospitals staff members have been caught accessing confidential patient information inappropriately and are being disciplined, hospital officials said today. One of those caught was fired. The infractions were found during a routine review of computer access to patient information, officials said. “UI Hospitals and Clinics is fully committed to assuring the highest possible…

PERSONAL details of 1,800 patients have been lost after two computers were stolen from East Yorkshire hospitals. A laptop was taken from a locked cupboard at Castle Hill Hospital, Cottingham, containing details of urology patients and a PC which held details of cancer patients was taken from Hull Royal Infirmary. Dr David Hepburn, Medical Director…

Radio Netherlands reports: The Dutch Data Protection Authority reports that hospitals are careless with patient’s computer records. The report follows an inspection at 20 hospitals, none of which were found to have adequate data security. Entire departments were found to be using the same login name and password. And in many hospitals, computers are left…

From EPIC.org: Google announced this week a new web tool that may make it possible to detect flu outbreaks before they might otherwise be reported. Google Flu Trends relies on individual search terms, such as “flu symptoms,” provided by Internet users. Google has said that it will only reveal aggregate data, but there are no…

From Mohit Joshi: If Dutch health minister Ab Klink has his way, the medical charts of all Dutch nationals will be stored in a single national database as of January 1. From that day onwards, the family doctor can read what the neurologist has written down about his patient, while the neurologist can study his…

University of Florida officials have notified about 330,000 current and former dental patients that an unauthorized intruder recently accessed a College of Dentistry computer server storing their personal information. The breach was discovered October third while college information technology staff members were upgrading the server and found software had been installed on it remotely. It…