“Microsoft Corp. launched a Web site Thursday for managing personal health and medical information, but privacy advocates worry that neither the technology nor U.S. law will protect patients’ most confidential details,” The Associated Press reports.
“From the consumer’s point of view, Microsoft’s HealthVault site is part filing cabinet, part library and part fax machine for an individual’s or a family’s medical records and notes,” AP reports.
“The free site can store medical histories, immunization and other records from doctors’ offices and hospital visits, including data from devices like heart monitors. It is also tied to a health information search engine the software maker launched last month,” AP reports.
“While consumers have been willing to send financial details over the Web in spite of identity-theft horror stories, many still consider private medical information too sensitive to put online,” AP reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jim – TIV” for the heads up.]
Just the idea of Microsoft controlling medical information makes us sick.
MDN- Best take ever.
Microsoft, trying to convince users to enter private info, while MS would be violating HIPAA laws!
Microsoft already controls your medical records. Nary a medical records keeping system or medical billing system doesn’t run under Windows.
Scarier yet they have anything do do with our national intelligence or defense technology structure.
@Get Real MDN, what the hell are you talking about. I’m in the industry. Most medical record systems are NOT running under Windows. You may have a Windows client that accesses that data, but you’ll very rarely find a system where the data is stored on a Windows box. Look at Epic, Meditech, Cerner, Misys, GE/IDX, etc. and you won’t find any of them utilizing Windows underneath. More often than not it’s either VMS or Unix.
So.. lets see.. MS hhas been historically really good at protecting Hotmail accounts and confidentiality….
Ummmm.. Let’s see… The Patriot Act will be completely locked out of the medical records…
No medical information will be ever compromised or aggregated for any research project and well, if it is, then there will be no way for anyone to link it to the patient because it will all be anonymised.
Commenter : Get Real MDN
Having EMR or billing software run under Windows doesn’t put it under MS’s control and there are many that run under different OSes such as Mac OS, UNIXes, Java and SQL variants
They’re worried about whether the law offers proper safeguards? Hell, it’s a Microsoft product, that means any hacker in the world would have access to my records if they were on that website.
No hole in the law could be nearly as big as the security holes that exist in all Microsoft products.
MDN: “Just the idea of Microsoft controlling medical information makes us sick.”
Unfortunately, Microsoft’s pathetically mishandled, insecure technology is probably handling (yes, mis-handling is surely more accurate) most of our health records already…
It’s that fact that should make you sick…
Now, I have a question… what the hell has this got to do with a Mac, iPod, iPhone or AppleTV?
Microsoft will happily collect all your information and then sell it back to you (and others) as a subscription. Oh, and it will probably need to run via an ActiveX control, so Windows only.
Will somebody please tell them to get the hell out of everyones’ lives?
Microsoft could easily meet HIPAA requirements by having the person uploading the files agree to a HIPAA release or disclosure.
The truly scary part is that they’re calling it Health VAULT, giving consumers the idea that it will be very secure. I wouldn’t trust Microsoft with my health records even if they were all blank pages.
Sicko and Sicko-er
Lends new meaning to the infamous three letters HMO
–Hopeless Microsoft OS
Fsck. No.
Microsoft wants your most private medical information so it can sell it to insurance companies, large medical service operators and then after it’s been sold to everyone MS can think of to sell it to, they will start charging you for premium services.
Microsoft should start focusing on just creating a half way usable OS and stop trying to put their fingers in everyone else’s pie.
Microsoft Security – Oxymoron
Clippy: I see you’re suffering from AIDS. Would you like help with that?
Create a folder on your dotMac iDisk and put your stuff there.
In case of emergency, you can access it from all parts of the world.
Please don’t let Microsoft manages your medical records, you can die if a medical virus mixes the information. Microsoft has a bad record of security.
Seriously, there must be trust established before something like this can work. Microsoft has its paws in EVERYTHING these days (i.e. they are the new IBM) and is not very good at anything anymore. Unfortunately, whoever we trust to hold our medical records must be VERY GOOD at doing that.
So, sorry Microsoft. We just don’t trust you.
Guaranteed to keep doctors and patients out, but let hackers in.
To handle medical records a system should be:
a. Reliable
b. Secure
c. Responsive to user needs
Let’s see…Microsoft scores exactly zero out of three.
I can’t imagine anyone submitting to this. What kind of delusional pill are those guys on?
C’mon folks. It’s a beta. How bad can it be?
I wonder if people can register their avatars….
They better get some antivirus software
NO one needs this at all.
Medical records are one of the most personal types of data you have.
Records should stay in the doctors surgery or hospital where they belong.
I hate to thin what the consequences would be if all the records could be accessed by everyone.
BTW – in the UK If someone wants to see your medical records they will NOT be allowed to unless they are medical people.
Not even the UK Police have access to peoples medical records without a court order.
If I EVER see any of my family’s medical records on the web I will be sueing Microsoft and contacting the worlds press agencies as I have not iven written consent to anyone.
This is a VERY serious and personal subject.
Medical records come under the human rights act and the data protection act.
I wouldnt trust microsoft with this at all.
Once any data is put on the web any hacker could easily alte your medical records.
Imagine the senario, on your medical record states you may have had a ‘broken leg’… what if some hacker hacked into your medical records and changed it to ‘was treated for HIV related illness and has been diagnosed as having severe mental problems and liver cancer’.
A doctor then accesses your records and then you find you have cancer treatment appointments made and are prescribed HIV slowing drugs.
All because someone accessed your medical records online.
THAT is the extent of what could happen if medical records are put online!
@Jimbo von Winskinheimer
Similarly on the billing side; I used to work for a medium sized medical billing service — we ran *gag* on SCO UNIX.
The application software was written in *puke* BASIC. It did work, though… with a lot of maintenance by the software vendor.
Y2K was funny; many reports with dates of 01/01/A0…
Really brings a frightning new reality to the term “blue screen of death” doesn’t it
MW does; How do they do that?
i’m an intensive care physician and I work in a fully computerised unit where there is a Dell at every bed and every work area. This is because the software is windows only and the corporate entity that is our IT dept is windows only.
But our data is staying with us (on apple servers).
we don’t have too many problems – but then we certainly won’t be “downgrading” to Vista
however wherever there is choice myself and all my fellow physicians choose to use macbooks, macbook pros or imacs in our offices.
Oh no. Don´t get sick. Then M$ could control you …
MS: prove that it’s prime-time ready and worthy to be used (a MS first…).
Put all of your own employees’ records on that system, esp. Gates’ and Ballmer’s.
When it proves 100% secure and 100% reliable, for a continuous 5-year period of real-world use, then we’ll consider it.
HealthVault, how original.
Do they go through OS X to come up with ideas?
@roger said:
Microsoft has its paws in EVERYTHING these days (i.e. they are the new IBM) and is not very good at anything anymore.
Not so. I was there. The old IBM was reliable, competent, and trustworthy.
Centralized medical databases work well for the VA. Every veteran’s medical records are available at every VA facility to THE PROPER PERSONNEL. My daughter, a physician who occasionally works at her local VA, has to sign in for her patients only and must secure authority to view any other record.
The VA doesn’t do this on the Internet.
I would never trust Microsoft.
The old IBM was reliable, competent, and trustworthy.
Yet they contracted away the PC industry to MS. Oops.
Funny how one little decision became such a turning point. If only IBM had built (or bought) their own PC OS…
Your medical info is already compromised, that is, sold to medical insurance industry databases, if you make the mistake of putting your social security number on the form you fill out at the doctor’s office. It’s outrageous they even ask for it, but all you have to do is to refuse, and there’s nothing they can do about it according to the Federal Privacy Act.
In the rain-soaked, medical garbage-alley running behind Microsofts new health-management website ran two figures in v-neck sweaters being chased by a group of jaundiced vigilantes. The two figures stumble over an employee who’s making music on a plays-for-sure prosthetic sex organ. From the opposite direction come a small group of Romanian hackers who are blackmailing the vigilantes with stolen medical records. One of the Romanians takes the sex organ …all of it ..the fat man grabs the Romanians ankle and in the alley, behind the new website, a gangland style fight involving the two figures in v-neck sweaters, the vigilantes, the Romanians and the musician cause the website to fold in on itself. People trying to access the site on the internet just see a bunch of plays-for-sure playing cards. The two figures have found a hiding place behind a melon cart in the Zune marketplace. The vigilantes are taken to Romania and sold into medical research.
There is no way I will trust Microsoft to secure and protect my health data. Microsoft have a terrible security record and a corporate profit uber-alles mentality that makes it completely inappropriate for them to pose as guardians for me. This initiative is yet another attempt to extend the Windows hegemony to engage new tentacles.