Clooney Med Privacy Breach

A NJ hospital recently discovered (or just revealed) that more than twenty employees inappropriately accessed George Clooney's electronic medical record. Personally, I don't find this surprising, but I'm amazed that the hospital didn't have any protections in place for VIPs (How about a pseudonym?). Though the incident occurred, let's not be too quick to jump to conclusions about the hospital's data management or data access policies. The story is still unfolding.

Microsoft and Personal Health Records

If you keep up with the popular news outlets, then you've seen the fanfare associated with Microsoft's new online personal health record system, HealthVault. If not, here are several links to NY Times stories:

1: 10/4/07: Microsoft Rolls Out Personal Health Records

2: 10/5/07: Microsoft System to Track Health Records

To follow-up on the project, Annie Anton has written a good overview of the privacy concerns associated with Microsoft's HealthVault policies.

Illegally Accessing your EMR?

A recent story in Wyoming - several employees recntly broke federal privacy law by accessing their OWN records.

Read more on the story here.