Keeping Private Health Data Private

We’ve talked about Google, Microsoft and WebMD services that encourage people to upload, store and manage their medical records online. The upside: you and your doctors can have immediate access to your medical information when you need it. The downside: security. As it turns out, voluntarily uploading our health records may be the least of our worries. Researchers at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business found that plenty of doctors, hospitals and health care organizations are inadvertently leaking our data online for us.

Dr. Eric Johnson is director of the Center for Digital Strategies at Tuck, and he and his team went online and found reams of personal health records in public cyberspace. He joins us to talk about what they found.

Center for Digital Strategies: "Data Hemorrhages in the Health-Care Sector"

Center for Digital Strategies: "Information Leakage in the Extended Enterprise"

Eric Johnson discusses "Inadvertent Disclosures" on YouTube:

Wired Threat Level: "Academic Claims to Find Sensitive Medical Info Exposed on Peer-to-Peer Networks"

(Photo courtesy john-norris via Flickr/Creative Commons)