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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. "
I know I'd gladly trust my personal information to a Windows-based system. After all, Microsoft says it's secure, and they totally nailed security in Windows 95 ^H^H 98 ^H^H 2000 ^H^H^H^H XP ^H^H Vista
hmm, want to back that up. My wife works with medical records, and HIPPA severely limits who can see any patient information.
Umm... Do the words Sony and Rootkit somehow ring a bell?
Ok, let's say Sony isn't a software company (though, no doubt about it, that was a piece of software we're talking about). How about McAfee detecting Excel as a trojan and removing it, killing hours of productivity? Ok, one might argue it's not a privacy issue. How about the multiple security holes in Windows?
Now show me how they were held responsible for anything.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.