Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Working On Health Information 'Vault' System
josmar52789 wrote with an article from the New York Times, discussing Microsoft's new push into the consumer health care market. The plan is to offer personal health care records online via a system called HealthVault. Numerous big names in the medical field have signed up for the service, including the 'American Heart Association, Johnson & Johnson LifeScan, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the Mayo Clinic and MedStar Health'. The ultimate purpose of the service is to provide an online accessible but highly secure service to patients and medical facilities: "The personal information, Microsoft said, will be stored in a secure, encrypted database. Its privacy controls are set entirely by the individual, including what information goes in and who gets to see it. The HealthVault searches are conducted anonymously and will not be linked to any personal information in a HealthVault personal health record. Microsoft does not expect most individuals to type in much of their own health information into the Web-based record. Instead, the company hopes that individuals will give doctors, clinics and hospitals permission to directly send into their HealthVault record information like medicines prescribed or, say, test results showing blood pressure and cholesterol levels. "
Even if these records were under my own control, on a my server, behind a firewall I control, in my home connected over my home broadband, or some other system where I control physical and network access to it, I still wouldn't trust Microsoft to control it.
Microsoft has proven that it should be trusted with info only when absolutely necessary, like when you're already locked into its OS/software monopoly. The CIOs of those healthcare corps already know that: it's not just common knowledge, but they're spending $millions every year coping with Microsoft server and desktop insecurities in their orgs. Their disregard of the certainty that Microsoft will leak this data just says that they have no respect whatsoever for the privacy and safety of their patients - and those patients' families.
I expect this whole project is another way for Microsoft to get even more info to profile all Americans (and visitors) in every way. Probably some payback for Bush leaving them their monopoly that has to do with Bush wiretapping us. Together, Microsoft and the Federal government will have all our personal info, right down to our DNA and psychological tests.
--
make install -not war
When was the last time any software maker did so?
No, although I'd like to know those things about the people I deal with, and I don't really see any justification for why compromises in health care and infotech and my own capacity to decide who I wish to have dealings with, just to keep someones deep, dark secrets. I wouldn't say there should be any entitlement to damages either.
Every example you gave was a choice, not a disease.
Why should we be helping the alcoholic keep his job? Why should we be helping the transsexual, who we've already established to have a mental disorder? Why should it be impossible to decide to help young mothers-to-be instead of baby killing little sluts?
Seriously, what justification for any of this beyond live and let live? Is society meant to enshrine peoples right to trick people into thinking they're something they're not?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth