Privacy advocates say PHRs offer patients convenience at a price

 

Patients now have the ability to gather their health information—hospital visits, prescriptions, and health insurance plans—and manage them via an online services such as Microsoft HealthVault or Google Health, but that convenience of PHRs comes at a price, Scientific American reported August 19.

 

 Privacy advocates are quick to note that although these companies store sensitive medical information, the strict data sharing and protection laws that govern the healthcare industry don’t apply to them, according to the article. HIPAA regulates how healthcare entities, such as insurers and hospitals, exchange patients’ health information, but it doesn’t apply to PHR storage services

 

Because no laws directly protect a user’s online health information, companies not subject to HIPAA set their own privacy policies, according to the article.

 

“There isn't anyone to regulate the security and privacy of the personal health information records,” Deven McGraw, director of the Health Privacy Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Scientific American. “It is not a very good landscape for consumers in regards to very sensitive health information.”

 

The Health Privacy Project is a nonprofit public advocacy group based in Washington, DC. It focuses on the impact of technology on individual rights.

 

Click here to read the Scientific American article.