Category: Health Data

Alabama Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation officials say records containing patient information have gone missing. Index cards with patients’ names, social security numbers and birthdates were recently discovered missing at Greil Hospital in Montgomery. Full story – WZTV

In an update yesterday to city and county councillors on the medical records found buried in a former landfill outside Cork, the Health Service Executive (HSE) claimed there were “only 15 fully legible sets of notes”. Addressing the regional health forum south, Gerry O’Dwyer, network manager of the Southern Hospitals’ Group, said the majority of…

Richard Pizzi describes a new consumer-oriented service from AccessMyRecords.com in Healthcare IT News. Enrollees would be able to activate a setting in their account that would allow their emergency health histories to be accessed from their cell phones in case of emergency so that first responders, paramedics, etc., could obtain vital information. This is an…

Nancy Ferris reports: Provisions to strengthen privacy protections for patients will be added to the long-stalled Wired for Health Care Quality Act in the Senate under an agreement between the sponsors and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). Leahy’s concerns about the security and privacy of health records had held up Senate action on the bill, the…

CDT’s Health Privacy Project today released a paper urging policymakers and the private sector to develop and implement a comprehensive privacy and security framework to govern the wide range of computer and Internet-based systems being created to share sensitive health information. The paper examines the key issues confronting the adoption of information technology in the…

Mark John reports in Reuters: The European Union has rushed through rules giving police access to DNA databases across the bloc without regard for proper safeguards, a data protection watchdog said on Thursday. Tourists could find themselves suspects in a cross-border criminal investigation merely for having had a drink at a motorway service station, European…