Category: Health Data

  Abstract: This paper will consider the current privacy laws as applied to healthcare in the UK, taking into account the UK Data Protection Act 1998, which implements the European Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC. Whilst the data protection laws in the UK deals with the overall protection of an individual’s personal information, there are certain…

Express Scripts (Nasdaq:ESRX), one of the largest pharmacy benefit management companies in North America, today announced that it has received a letter from an unknown person or persons trying to extort money from the company by threatening to expose millions of the company’s patients’ records. The letter included personal information of 75 members, including their…

Sue Dunlevy reports: MEDICARE bureaucrats will get access to patients’ private medical records as part of a new crackdown on doctors who overcharge Medicare for their services. Doctors will have to hand over patient records to auditors to prove they carried out procedures for which they claimed a Medicare payment. The measure is part of…

Jo Deeks reports: A WOMAN received confidential letters from Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge containing medical records of other patients. Nicola Marsh was horrified to receive the two letters in one envelope at her home in Haverhill. Read more in Cambridge News Online

Peter Buxbaum reports: Microsoft Corp. is the lead developer in a partnership with the Military Health System and Google Inc. to develop a personal health record system for military health care beneficiaries, an MHS spokesman said. An initial version of the system is scheduled to be unveiled in Dec. 2008, according to an MHS blog…

John Timmer writes: Today’s issue of Nature contains the latest milestone on the road to personal genomics, as researchers are reporting the complete sequencing of the genomes of two more people, one Asian, one Yoruban. The sequencing was done relatively quickly and cheaply using a technique that didn’t even exist when Bill Clinton presided over…