medical
Computerized medicine: good for quality, but not costs
Electronic medical records and the general digitization of medical data and practices are promoted as a way to slow the rapidly inflating costs in the US healthcare system. The push for expanded medical IT has come from the top, with President Obama extolling its virtues and his administration making funding for EMR deployments part of its stimulus package. But many have pointed out that simply throwing computers at a problem isn’t a solution unless the software and practices are also in place to allow the medical community to leverage the technology efficiently.
Continue reading »FDA ponders drug ads on Twitter, et al
How far should Twitter, Wikipedia, blogs and other “social media” go in promoting drugs online? Google, Yahoo and “other Web companies” don’t believe you already have enough coming at you in the way of advertisements. So they’re joining the pharmaceuticals in trying to talk US federal regulators into making it easier to tout drugs online.
Continue reading »Medical Records: Stored in the Cloud, Sold on the Open Market
When patients visit a physician or hospital, they know that anyone involved in providing their health care can lawfully access their medical records. But unknown to patients, an increasing number of outside vendors that manage electronic health records also have access to that data, and are reselling the information as a commodity. The revelation comes in a recent New York Times article about how so-called “scrubbed” patient data isn’t as anonymous as people think .
Continue reading »California Flooded with Health Breach Reports Under New Law
California officials have received more than 800 reports of health data breaches in five months after a new state law went into effect January 1. The law requires healthcare organizations in California to report suspected incidents of intentional and unintentional unauthorized breaches of a patient’s personally identifiable health information to the California Department of Public Health. The agency, however, says it was surprised by the large number of reports it received in such a short period, according to the Journal of the American Health Information Management Association , and expect that number to increase dramatically.
Continue reading »Berkman Center Founder Denies Pretrial Shenanigans
Charles Nesson, the founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, told a federal judge Thursday he has been abiding by court rules and orders in a file sharing case set for a July 27 trial. Nesson, who defended Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case, provided his response amid concerns from the judge presiding over the copyright infringement case that he has shown a “ blatant disregard ” for court procedure. The Recording Industry Association of America, the plaintiff in the case, has urged U.S.
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