Category Archives: Privacy

A sickening side-effect of the eHealth revolution

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Globe and Mail – The digital revolution is poised to transform Canadian health care, promising more timely access to doctors and streamlined service that is expected to improve the patient experience while reducing waste and unnecessary testing.

But the technological changes – from an app that connects surgical patients to their doctors, wherever they are, to the dream of a single electronic health record a patient has for life – also come with a downside: the possible breach of privacy.

Ontario’s Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian says she is a huge supporter of electronic health records but stressed they must be done in a secure manner, adding that nothing deserves greater protection than a patient’s medical information. For the rest of the story see Globe and Mail

Google Health: First Failure of 2012

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ComputerWorld – At the stroke of midnight on New Year’s day, Google Health, the personal health record data aggregation service for consumers, will shut down for good.

Google first made the announcement quietly, in a blog post last June. But the closure of Google Health next month is also an important inflection point for public cloud-based services.

Google Health’s failure shows that there are limits to how far users are willing to go in allowing access to personal information in exchange for free services. Will other initiatives soon follow?

Google’s goal was “to create a service that would give people access to their personal health and wellness information,” all in one place. It did not provide federated access to the data, but physically moved the data to its servers. It wanted to “translate our successful consumer-centered approach from other domains to healthcare and have a real impact on the day-to-day health experiences of millions of our users,” according to Google’s blog post.

Google anonymized, or “de-identified” users’ personal health data for purposes of data mining and publishing trends, most famously the trending information on influenza outbreaks. But its privacy policy precluded sharing of personally identifying information, and even de-identified information, with third parties. Read More

Canada ‘selling’ its sovereignty under proposed border deal with USA

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Vancouver Sun – OTTAWA — The author of a report criticizing Canada’s anticipated trade and security agreement with the United States says Canada is “selling” its sovereignty with no guarantee of a reduction of red tape at the border for Canadian business.

On Wednesday, Gar Pardy spoke about his report for the Rideau Institute called Shared Vision or Myopia: The Politics of Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness, offering a scathing rebuke of the proposed cross-border agreement with the U.S.

The federal government says the deal, expected to be made official within weeks, will result in an increase in perimeter security and will ease trade with our neighbours to the south.

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