Alan Bavley of McClatchy Newspapers writes: In large upright freezers, researchers at St. Luke’s Hospital are stashing tens of thousands of tiny tubes that will hold blood samples of up to 2,000 people. It’s a major project to study patients’ medical charts and look for the genes and blood proteins that put people with diabetes…
Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Western NY loses laptop; 40,000 customers notified
Matt Pitts of WGRZ-TV writes: Thousands of Blue Cross-Blue Shield customers are being notified by mail that their identity could potentially be compromised. A viewer called 2 On Your Side to tell us her son received a letter from the company telling him his information is on a company laptop computer that’s missing. Blue Cross-Blue…
245 computers stolen from 19 universities in Japan
The Yomiuri Shimbun reports: […] The Metropolitan Police Department began investigating the case after computers were stolen from the science and engineering departments of prestigious universities in Tokyo, including Tokyo and Waseda universities. The MPD then learned that a total of 245 computers had been stolen from 19 universities since September 2006. In Tokyo, 16…
Health IT execs mull fixes on health record privacy
Maureen McKinney writes in Government Health IT: Health information technology executives this week called for the development and dissemination of a more lucid set of policies on consumer access to health records in order to allay public fears that using a personal health record would put their health privacy at risk. In a Web conference…
Chronology of Breaches for 2008 uploaded
The chronology of medical- or health-related breaches that were published in 2008 is now available on this site for the first part of this year. It will be updated several times during the year. So far, there are 26 incidents in the chronology. If you are aware of other incidents not including in this chronology…
Paperless patients
Daniel Lee writes in the Indianapolis Star: A patient walks into a doctor’s office for the first time and immediately is handed a clipboard holding a form asking for all sorts of information on that person’s health status and medical history. NoMoreClipboard.com, a Fort Wayne medical technology startup, hopes to tap into consumers’ frustration with…