An Op-Ed on Gazette.net by Gerald G. Stansbury of the Maryland State NAACP; June White Dillard of the Prince George’s Branch NAACP; and Cynthia Boersma of the ACLU of Maryland addresses proposed legislation in Maryland: Warrantless seizure of DNA from individuals who are arrested but not convicted of crimes is being considered in the Maryland…
Author: Dissent
UK: 300,000 prescriptions lost by NHS
The BBC reports: Thousands of prescription forms, carrying the names and addresses of patients, go missing every year as they are transported around the NHS. The government has admitted that almost 300,000 have been lost or stolen in England since 1997. Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said handling of personal information was “serially incompetent”. But…
New image technique could allow scanners to read minds
James Randerson writes in the Guardian: Scientists have developed a mind-reading technique that allows them to accurately predict images being viewed by people, by using scanners to study brain activity. The breakthrough by American scientists took MRI scanning equipment normally used in surgical procedures to observe patterns of brain activity when a subject examined a…
Wisconsin Senate passes bill to accommodate patient data exchange; passage expected in Assembly
From WTN News: On a voice vote, the State Senate has passed a bill that would pave the way for the electronic exchange of patient data between different health systems and facilities. The measure, Senate Bill 487, was immediately sent to the State Assembly, where its companion bill, AB 793, is expected to pass today…
Will privacy keep Health 2.0 from the starting gate?
Business journalist Dana Blankenhorn writes on ZDNet: […] Just two weeks ago the World Privacy Forum, ironically also based in San Diego, came out with two warnings about Personal Health Records (PHRs) which made them appear to be a tragedy waiting to happen. PHRs, once placed online, are not covered by HIPAA, the forum said,…
In the UK, two more stolen hospital laptops cause worry
Although I do not include them in the chronologies of medical privacy breaches available on this site, I do note medical privacy breaches in other countries. Two more reports out of the U.K. this morning are noteworthy. The first involves the Telford & Wrekin Primary Care Trust: A laptop with confidential information about more than…