JMIR articles are regularly making headlines (journalists: sign up to receive press releases and please alert us if you plan to publish a story!).
Health records exposed on recycled computers
Researchers extract personal health information from computers purchased from second-hand vendors
Globe and Mail
October 5, 2007 at 6:45 AM EDT
A new study raises disturbing questions about the security of medical records that are increasingly being stored on computers.
Canadian researchers were able to extract personal health information from used computers they purchased from second-hand vendors. The computers had not been properly stripped of their data before they were resold.
"Some of the data we found was very startling - and very personal information," said Khaled El Emam, who led the study at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute and the University of Ottawa. The data included information about mental health, addictions, drug prescriptions as well as medical correspondence.
In some cases, the original owners had kept data about their own medical conditions. But in other cases, the computers were used by health care workers - including employees and subcontractors - who may have worked at home on patient files.
For the study, the researchers randomly purchased 60 used disk drives from dealers in several provinces.
They were able to retrieve data from 65 per cent of them. Of these disk drives, 18 per cent contained personal medical information, according to the study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
Dr. El Emam noted that simply deleting a computer file does not actually remove the data from the disk drive. "With special software, you can recover a lot of that stuff," he warned.
That means computers used for sensitive health information should be specially encrypted to prevent the data from being easily accessed by a new computer owner.
Or the drive itself should be destroyed rather than ending up on the second-hand market.
Dr. El Emam fears a security breach could undermine the public's confidence in the health care system. What's more, it could lead to medical fraud, with people getting medical treatment using stolen insurance identification numbers.
"We really have to be sure that personal health information, especially when it is entrusted to other people, is protected and not inadvertently disclosed in this way," he said.
Source: Globe and Mail,
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071005.wldose05/BNStory/Technology/home
The Growing Clout Of Online Patient Groups
Laura Landro
The Wall Street Journal
June 13, 2007
(...)
When researchers at Harvard University were looking for a gene mutation in a group of rare blood cancers, they turned to Joyce Niblack, who put the word out to an online patient mailing list she manages, spurring more than 300 members to send in mouth swabs and bone-marrow samples. Later, Ms. Niblack mustered 1,179 participants from 30 countries for a Mayo Clinic-led study of how the cancers, known as myeloproliferative disorders, affect quality of life. The Mayo researchers are now running the clinical-trials page on her foundation's Web site, mpdinfo.org1, to keep participants up to date on developments. Online patient groups have become an increasingly powerful force for health-care consumers over the past decade, raising funds for research and offering patient information and support. Now, as the cumulative power of their memberships grows, these groups are becoming invaluable partners to researchers and physicians searching for cures. (...)
"We can bring information about studies, clinical trials and meetings to any patient world-wide who has computer access," says Ms. Niblack, a retired patent attorney who runs both an ACOR mailing site and the MPD Foundation and has been fighting the disease for almost 20 years. "People have told me the information has saved their lives."
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill teamed up with ACOR for the first large-scale scientific analysis of medical online communities, publishing its findings last month in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. Using software that analyzes message content to examine the type of support provided by the groups, the researchers found that the most common topics in messages were about treatment information and how to communicate with health-care providers.
"One of the real values in the mailing lists is their role in getting patients to seek second opinions and ask questions about clinical trials," says Barbara Rimer, dean of North Carolina's School of Public Health and an author of the study.
The software programs enabled researchers to study messages without identifying who wrote them.
Medical Googling helps patients but irks doctors
Julie Deardorff
Chicago Tribune
December 8, 2006
Increasing numbers of us are Googling our own weird headaches, rashes and unexplained symptoms before heading to the doctor. And although physicians are secretly Googling difficult medical situations, many aren't thrilled that we're doing the same thing. In fact, doctors used words like "nightmare," "annoying," "irritating" and "frustrating" when talking about the burden of dealing with patients who bring in stacks of Internet-based health information (and misinformation), according to a recent study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. Even though 80 percent of North Americans access health information on the Internet, some doctors see it as an unwelcome intrusion and resent the new interpretive role they have been put in. The practice, they say, not only increases their workload but also leads patients to confusion, distress and a tendency toward detrimental self-diagnosis. Doctors aren't necessarily threatened when patients use Internet health information to educate themselves once they have a diagnosis. What bugs them is when their clients beat them to the punch. "Patients were perceived as 'challenging' when they used Internet information for self-diagnosis or self-treatment or to test the knowledge of physicians," the study found. Patients also were described as adversarial, neurotic and lacking trust in their provider.
ONLINE PHARMACIES: What the doctor downloaded.
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-7451759_ITM
Haymarket Business Publications Ltd.
As the dispensing of prescription drugs becomes big business online, Charlotte Goddard reveals the steps being taken to ensure the practice harms neither patients nor the reputation of pharmacies
Anyone with a Hotmail account or an easily accessible email address will be used to receiving emails with titles such as 'Viagra - Xenical - Phentermine and more!'; 'Cheap Viagra!' and 'POWERFUL LEGAL STEROIDS'. Anti-spam company Brightmail found that 10 per cent of all spam passing through its Probe Network over a 24-hour period this August was health-related. A search for Viagra on Google UK brings up eight sponsored links (a search for 'books' only brings six). Buying and selling of prescription drugs online is clearly big business.
But it's a grey sector, controlled by unclear legislation, and one in which legitimate online pharmacies need to position and market themselves well to differentiate themselves from less scrupulous individuals or organisations.
In 1999, the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) tested a number of online pharmacies and found that many would sell Viagra without any kind of prescription. A number of other web sites sold the drug after a medical questionnaire was filled in - even when the questionnaire indicated that the person buying the drug was too old, obese, or had coronary artery disease and hypertension, all of which can make taking the drug dangerous. According to the report, the researchers 'ordered a total of 66 pills worth USdollars 1,802.84 (pounds 1,161.32). Three companies delivered within six, 10 and 34 days respectively, despite Viagra being clearly contraindicated (by the unsuitability of the drug for the patient).'
A further report from the JMIR, published in January 2001, estimated that at least 150 companies were selling Viagra over the web.