Is Digitized Health Info Risky?

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Experts say privacy and security issues are only multiplied when healthcare companies electronically store and share health data.

Health information that has been digitized is dangerous, according to experts interviewed by the Bloomberg Business Report. The potential for errors increases risk of mixed up information and safety hazards for patients.

iHealth Beat reports insurers still use prescription data to decide on corporate budgets, identify high-risk patients and set group rates despite the fact it is illegal for health insurers to reject applicants based on pre-existing conditions under the Affordable Care Act.

“The government may say it’s not a privacy violation, but that’s not how the people experience it,” said Deborah Peel, founder of Austin advocacy group Patient Privacy Rights. “Even if we wanted to check up on our data, we have no idea who these companies are.”

“The databases are completely opaque,” Peel said. “They’re opaque to regulators, and they’re opaque to us.”

According to Ifeoma Ajunwa, an assistant professor of law at the University of the District of Columbia, “A major concern with prescription databases is that they provide ample opportunities for invasions of privacy.”

Allegations of mixed up data include a woman who claims the database linked her health information with her daughter’s inexplicably in the record and another where a family says their mother’s death was a result of problems with her EHR.