Data Sharing Review

[Wendy M. Grossman]

PeteM wrote:
> 
> Personally I am much more afraid of the government's abuse of my medical 
> records than I am about any third party's. Partly because the government 
> has far greater power over my life than anyone else, and partly because 
> they have form in misusing personal data. And if the government wants 
> access to my records, they won't need to worry about whether they are 
> encrypted, because they'll have the key. That's why I don't think 
> encryption is really an issue in this debate at all.
> 

Nonetheless, it makes *no* sense to make it trivially easy for any 
passing curious person to take a look. *Of course* encryption is an 
issue - especially in the sense of ensuring that the data hasn't been 
tampered with or altered. It's bad enough to have errors in medical 
records now; with electronic records that are likely to be viewed as 
canonical it will be that much worse.

Perhaps the medical people here could say whether it's right to be 
concerned that staff may get used to believing whatever's in the 
centralized record rather than checking for themselves?

wg