From EPIC.org: EPIC filed a friend of the court brief in the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit today, urging the judges to uphold a Vermont law that regulates companies that sell or use prescriber-identifiable data for marketing. Several data-mining companies challenged the law after it was upheld by a district court. EPIC’s amicus…
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The Promise of Personal Health Records
Resolution of Canada’s Privacy Commissioners and Privacy Enforcement Officials CONTEXT Personal health records (PHRs) have started to attract attention in Canada with recently announced services from the public and private sectors that will offer online health records for consumers. This has major implications for the development of the pan-Canadian electronic health infostructure. In this context,…
DC medical receptionist guilty in $2 million ID theft scheme
Associated Press reports that Makieta Leake pleaded guilty to stealing bank account information from patients as part of an identity theft ring. Leake is the fifth person to plead guilty in a ring that victimized Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.  According to AP: Leake admitted she stole information from 37 patients. She was paid between $200…
Case in point
Some people — who shall go nameless for now — call some of us “privacy nuts” as if it’s a bad thing. But anyone who works in the field of mental health, as I do, may be understandably seriously concerned about privacy and security issues. I received a phone call this week that’s a case…
Pharmacies seek Privacy/Security Changes
Joseph Goedert reports on Health Data Management: The National Community Pharmacists Association is seeking changes in certain provisions of the HIPAA privacy and security rules that were expanded by the HITECH Act within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, the…
Mass. Health Bill Would Allow Warrantless Arrests, Quarantines
Alex Newman writes: A pandemic and disaster preparation bill (S. 2028) passed unanimously by the Massachusetts Senate earlier this year is receiving wide-spread criticism as citizens mobilize to oppose its passage in the commonwealth’s House of Representatives. “Under this bill, Massachusetts becomes a medical police state. There is no debating it,†wrote Natural News editor…