Patient Privacy Rights

See the following -

A New Pothole on the Health Interoperability Superhighway

Adrian Gropper | The Health Care Blog | August 15, 2017

On July 24, the new administration kicked off their version of interoperability work with a public meeting of the incumbent trust brokers. They invited the usual suspects Carequality, CARIN Alliance, CommonWell, Digital Bridge, DirectTrust, eHealth Exchange, NATE, and SHIEC with the goal of driving for an understanding of how these groups will work with each other to solve information blocking and longitudinal health records as mandated by the 21st Century Cures Act...

Read More »

Adrian Gropper Calls for "HIE of One" to Protect Patient Privacy

Leonard Kish talks with patient privacy advocate and expert, Dr. Adrian Gropper, about his work in providing better patient control over their health data and the role of agency, identity and existing internet tools to fulfill better patient control. Dr. Gropper's take on The Pledge for interoperability and patient access: it's a deflection to try to skirt around government action. According to Gropper, who was interviewed during the HIMSS16 conference, the patients' right of consent around their data has been seen as too risky, but the converse is now that there is zero accountability and massive amounts of data are being sold on the black market.

Read More »

Anthem Hack Exposes Privacy Failings At Health Information Exchange Created By Health Insurers

Press Release | Consumer Watchdog | February 5, 2015

The day after Anthem Blue Cross revealed that millions of customers’ information had been hacked, Consumer Watchdog and Patient Privacy Rights called on Cal INDEX, the health information database created by Anthem and Blue Shield of California, to allow consumers to opt-in rather than force them to opt-out. “The Anthem hack makes clear that no company can guarantee their customers’ information will be protected. Without that guarantee, consumers must have the ability to prevent their information from being shared before it occurs,” wrote Carmen Balber, Executive Director of Consumer Watchdog and Deborah C. Peel, MD, Founder and Chair of Patient Privacy Rights in a letter to the CEO of Cal INDEX...

Read More »

Google Taking Over Health Records Raises Patient Privacy Fears

Jeremy Kahn and John Lauerman | Bloomberg | November 21, 2018

Last year, the U.K. government privacy watchdog said an NHS hospital had illegally sent 1.6 million patient records to DeepMind to develop Streams, fanning public fears about data safety. In June, a group of outside experts DeepMind Health appointed to scrutinize its work urged the unit to "entrench" its separation from Alphabet. After the consolidation with Google was announced, Julia Powles, a researcher at New York University School of Law and a critic of DeepMind's work with the NHS, scorched the reversal. "DeepMind said it'd never connect Streams with Google," she wrote. "The whole Streams app is now a Google product! That is an atrocious breach of trust."...

Read More »