Charles Ornstein reports in the Los Angeles Times: UCLA Medical Center is taking steps to fire at least 13 employees and has suspended at least six others for snooping in the confidential medical records of pop star Britney Spears, who was recently hospitalized in its psychiatric ward, a person familiar with the matter said today….
Category: Health Data
Laptop with patient information stolen from University Health Care
Sarah Dallof of KSL reports: Thousands of people are being cautioned to keep their eyes on their credit reports tonight. A laptop with names, Social Security numbers and personal health information was stolen from University Health Care in Salt Lake City. The laptop was reported missing Feb. 25. University Health Care began mailing out letters…
Hospital tech gets 2 years for theft from dead Grapevine police officer
Domingo Ramirez Jr. reports in the Star-Telegram: DALLAS — Dandy “Chris” Wiles stood over the body of a Grapevine man last May in the emergency room at Baylor Medical Center at Grapevine, high on the club drug ketamine as he worked as an emergency room technician. He was supposed to collect the belongings and jewelry…
UK: "No one to blame" for patient info leak
Tomasz Johnson reports in the Hendon Times: Investigations into how confidential patient records were found in a Potters Bar road have failed to attribute blame for the security breach. Details of serious illnesses and outpatient forms belonging to patients at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Whipps Cross University Hospital and London Ambulance Service ended up strewn across…
UK: Counselling Service admits breach of trust after releasing over 300 emails
Raf Sanchez reports in Nouse: The University Counselling Service [at York University] has admitted a “serious breach of trust†after releasing the email addresses of over three hundred students and staff taking counselling. The addresses were accidentally put in the cc field of an email sent out on February 22 to 344 people on the…
Hacking Medical Devices (update 1)
Bruce Schneier writes about recent news stories concerning hacking medical devices: Okay, so this could be big news: But a team of computer security researchers plans to report Wednesday that it had been able to gain wireless access to a combination heart defibrillator and pacemaker.They were able to reprogram it to shut down and to…