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…
Author: Dissent
Dutch hospitals lax on data security
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…
Google "Flu Trends" Raises Privacy Concerns
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…
NL: Privacy row over putting Dutch medical charts on file
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…
FL: Dental School Security Breach
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…
Magee admits privacy breach in whistleblower filing
Walter F. Roche Jr. reports: Attorneys for Magee-Womens Hospital filed documents available on the Internet that included the names and confidential medical information of several patients, in what hospital officials called an inadvertent violation of federal law. The filings were made in the case of a former secretary at the UPMC facility who was fired…