The BBC reports: Thousands of prescription forms, carrying the names and addresses of patients, go missing every year as they are transported around the NHS. The government has admitted that almost 300,000 have been lost or stolen in England since 1997. Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said handling of personal information was “serially incompetent”. But…
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In the UK, two more stolen hospital laptops cause worry
Although I do not include them in the chronologies of medical privacy breaches available on this site, I do note medical privacy breaches in other countries. Two more reports out of the U.K. this morning are noteworthy. The first involves the Telford & Wrekin Primary Care Trust: A laptop with confidential information about more than…
Virginia: Mental health bills head to Kaine
Mason Adams and Michael Sluss write in The Roanoke Times: The General Assembly voted unanimously Tuesday to approve a package of bills intended to reform Virginia’s mental health system and fill long-neglected gaps exposed by April’s shootings at Virginia Tech. […] The legislation would ease Virginia’s standard for involuntary commitment and improve monitoring of people…
Google Health adless; privacy backers wary
Google Inc. won’t sell ads to support a new Internet service that stores personal medical information, CEO Eric Schmidt said Thursday in the search giant’s first detailed comments about a venture that has raised privacy concerns. …The bigger problem with these online health systems, privacy advocates say, is that they aren’t covered by the federal…
Hazardous to Your Privacy?
The Cleveland Clinic, the renowned nonprofit medical center, has kept electronic records of its patients for some time. But despite the easy transport of everything digital, by and large those records have been as immobile as scrawled doctor’s notes stored in manila folders. And, in their traditional form, the clinic can’t view records of patients…
Healthcare organizations feeling cyberattacks growing
Healthcare organizations feel under increasing attack from the Internet, while security incidents involving insiders and disappearing laptops with sensitive data are piling up. On top of that, there’s now the prospect of a surprise audit from the federal government agency in charge of overseeing the HIPAA security and privacy rules. Healthcare organizations are stepping up…