Wow- what a great idea! Robert Langreth of Forbes reports about Microsoft's launch of HealthVault. HealthVault is a website that allows users to upload a cohesive account of their medical history. This is brilliant because, as the report says, "Current recordkeeping is a mishmash of files. Chronic care patients can wind up taking multiple medications prescribed by doctors who may be unaware of one another. Care of critically ill patients gets mismanaged because doctors can't find the right records" (Langreth). The article goes into more detail about the security risks.
Microsoft is the company that everyone loves to hate, but somewhere in the back of my mind I'm always rooting for them. Lately they've been beaten out by the sexy styles of Apple and the trendy nature of their products. I only wish that Microsoft would take their good ideas and produce products that are actually good. Bottom line: I like the idea of HealthVault but I doubt that anyone will trust their personal health information on the web, or more specifically with Microsoft. As a friend of mine who works in security says, "Once a piece of information leaves your hands, your physical grasp on it, you can no longer call it secure."
2 comments:
You have a point. I think people might be resistant at first trusting personal health docs in an online environment, but what comes to mind for me is now the ability to back up your hard drive to online servers. If people are willing to back up their entire lives to an online server (I haven't decided if I am ready to do that, haha) then putting health docs online doesnt seem too risky, especially if the health docs indicate things like your last tetnus shot or something of the sort.
Even insurance information being stored online doesn't really bother me, as I can't even count the amount of times I have input credit card information without thinking twice about it. I really am not even good about jumbling the way I enter it so as to confuse keystroke hackers (and I'm not even using firefox!!).
This might be something I sign up to pretty soon. I think it's a great idea.
I agree with you, people put things online all the time. I truly think this is an amazing service that will really help people in the long run.
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