Comments on: Second Life web resources for February 22nd 2008 through February 29th 2008

By: Casius Masala

Casius Masala — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:34:53 +0000

Sooner or later we will lose our trust with Google. I am not sure all of my search engine data and my health records and my email needs to be under one roof.

By: Vint Falken

Vint Falken — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 23:52:31 +0000

I think indeed, there is a huge privacy issue. A recent example of this is something that happened in the University Hospital of Leuven. Our prime minister (or almost prime minister, this is confusing) is there because of stomach problems. They have all medical files on computer, and check regularly who accesses them (all staff have their own login) in case of ‘famous’ people. One staff member checked it, without having any reason to do so (no doctor or nurse that was directly involved in the prime minister’s treatment). The person did not sell the info or do anything else malicious, yet he or she was fired.

So, yes, you can give each hospital it’s own encrypted key for instance, but then, within that hospital, there should still be a lot of control on who accesses the files and when.

For social insurance, we have our SIS-cards. It contains the following (digital) information: ID number for our mutuality, registration number with health insurance, information related to what kind of health insurance you have. But no medical data. And I must admit, as for now, I’m glad that data is not on there.

As it comes to my local physician’s practice, my physician (+- 45 years old) does still all the writing of what he subscribed, when I visited, … on paper. (The prescription notes are PC made though.) One of his younger associates keeps those same records on PC, but he told me once he has a hard time convincing the others of doing so too, which means that at the moment, he does both, the paperwork & the pc work.

By: Taran Rampersad (Nobody Fugazi)

Taran Rampersad (Nobody Fugazi) — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 22:21:47 +0000

Heh. Yeah, thanks for the note.

On the Patient Record thing - I had actually been working on something along the same lines for the Caribbean region, but there was no buy-in from medical providers:

http://www.knowprose.com/MAHIN
http://www.knowprose.com/node/3542

If Google’s doing it, well… it has the same trouble the MAHIN system would have had with respect to privacy. This is actually well handled by present security; I’d planned for PGP encryption as well - so to decode a page, a hospital/pharmacy/medical provider would have to have the patient’s key.

The trouble with the system - and I am proud of the concept of MAHIN - is that getting people to actually use it is an onerous task. I had a demo setup in the past, it got lots of “OOOHs” and “Ahhhs” but no one would commit and agree to cooperate in its use.

As always, the trouble was getting people to work together. Google making it a package product makes a lot of sense in that regard. Had I the capital, I probably would have done that. But who knows what the future holds, right? Especially in combination with something like ARC:

http://www.knowprose.com/ARC

Lots of good ideas, but no traction with disaster manglement (named in honor of Katrina) and health care administration. This stuff doesn’t have to be expensive. It just has to be good, and used. :-)