Tina Hinz reports: Reports of credit card fraud keep rolling into the Cedar Falls police department. About 100 victims had come forward as of noon Wednesday, said Police Chief Jeff Olson. Many are from the Cedar Falls area. Illegal charges, ranging from less than $100 to more than $1,000, have popped up in multiple states,…
UK: Controversial medical records database suspended
Kate Devlin reports: The project triggered anger when it was revealed that information could have been logged on the system without patients’ knowledge. The British Medical Association (BMA) warned that many people were not even aware of the scheme, let alone the fact that they could ‘opt out’. In some cases letters informing patients of…
Think Tank Sues to Get Drug Test Results of Ferry Crew Involved in Collision
Ed Friedrich reports from Washington: The Evergreen Freedom Foundation is suing the state Department of Transportation to get the results of drug and alcohol tests that a ferry crew took after their boat hit Seattle’s Colman Dock last summer. The libertarian think tank based in Olympia believes the public should be able to view documents…
Lost CD spurs hunt by NYS Department of Health
Rick Karlin reports from New York: A compact disc containing the names of 328,000 New Yorkers with developmental and other health issues has been missing for almost a month, prompting a massive desk-by-desk search at the state Department of Health’s Corning Tower headquarters. “We have not been able to locate within our Early Intervention program…
How Apple and Opera Mini just exposed your Medical Records to the world
Jared Houck dropped me a note to point me to this article he wrote pointing out a potential security risk when using Apple and Opera Mini: …. We’re quite sure that the iPhone and iPad see some use in the health care trenches. So, we’re gonna go out on a limb here to suggest that…
[CORRECTED] HHS proposes changes in system to implement HITECH provisions
A notice in the Federal Register this week has understandably generated a lot of comment in the health IT community. Here’s the summary from the notice: SUMMARY: In accordance with the Privacy Act, we are proposing to modify or alter an existing SOR, “Program Information Management System (PIMS),” System No. 09-90-0052, published at 67 FR…