Trump's next health care move: Giving Silicon Valley your medical data
Interoperability, Policy, Privacy & Cybersecurity
Trump's next health care move: Giving Silicon Valley your medical data
Trump's next health care move: Giving Silicon Valley your medical data
The Trump administration's push to give patients more control over their health records could turn over a massive trove of very personal data to giant tech companies, app designers and data brokers.
If proposed policy changes go through, patients would be able to download their health records on to their smartphones and direct it to apps of their choice. But there’s a major privacy pitfall: As soon as those records leave the software system of the doctor or hospital, they are no longer protected by HIPAA, the landmark medical privacy law.
That’s where Google and Apple step in to hoover up the data. The tech giants have lobbied the administration to require access. That might allow for unprecedented convenience, letting patients more easily share data for a second opinion or enabling a researcher to find participants for a clinical trial. But it also opens up a Wild West of data sharing on the most intimate health care details for millions of Americans.
The full Politico article can be viewed at this link.