Health industry, tech firms, government agencies might collaborate to build a secure database of patient records.
It’s five in the morning. You’re in a hotel room having a serious allergic reaction to something you ate. Do you know where your medical records are? If you’re like most Americans, they’re resting peacefully in a manila folder at your doctor’s office. And the writing inside looks something like Sanskrit. Someday, that information could be only a modem away–or closer, perhaps in a keychain drive in your luggage. The Bush administration has released a strategic plan for every U.S. citizen’s health information to be stored in an “electronic health record” central database within ten years. Each person would have a “personal health record,” an electronic file the individual would manage, that could exchange information with the EHR database.
I hope they have a way for patients to opt out as some may not want their sensitive information available for hackers to penetrate this so-called secure database. -KF
Source: PC World
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