Petti Fong reports: For all of her life, Olivia Pratten has known only the barest details about her biological father. Born in 1981 after her mother visited a fertility specialist in Vancouver, she has been told only that her father is Caucasian and was a medical student at the time of donation. Genetically, all she…
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Supreme Court grants review of Sorrell v. IMS Health
SCOTUSblog reports that the Supreme Court granted review today in a case that asks whether states can enact laws to protect prescription data from commercial access: The prescription records case, Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., et al. (10-779) is an appeal by Vermont state officials seeking to revive a state law that restricted commercial access…
AU: Transparency call on privacy: patient records
Karen Dearne reports: Australians will finally have a chance to shape the nation’s $467 million electronic health record system. Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon has agreed to release confidential plans for widespread debate. The Labor government’s “personally controlled” approach to a nationwide system of sharing patients’ medical records has caused much confusion since it was…
AU: Couple fighting govt over right to choose sex of their next child
Shelley Hadfield reports on a case that raises significant ethics and privacy questions: A couple so desperate for a baby girl that they terminated twin boys are fighting to choose the sex of their next child. The couple, who have three sons and still grieve for a daughter they lost soon after birth, are going…
Doctor-Patient Confidentiality in the Military
Privacy and confidentiality are not the same thing, of course, but an article by Patrick J Mclain, a court martial lawyer and retired military law judge, is worth noting on this blog. Discussing some of the allegations made in the case of Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hassan (the alleged Fort Hood shooter), Mclain notes that…
Nursing student wins Facebook placenta photo case against JCCC
Matt Campbell reports: Doyle Byrnes has every intention of resuming her nursing studies after a federal judge overturned her dismissal from the program for posting a photo of a human placenta on Facebook. The judge on Thursday shot down every argument, legal and otherwise, that Johnson County Community College had used to justify its ousting…