 | | It's all coming to an Internet line near you. Or so it seems... Photo by Jan Fredrik Frantzen and illustration by Jarl-Stian Olsen, NST. |
Internet-based systems such as Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault are gaining ground and store health information on the Internet - a situation that was difficult to imagine a few years back.
Both systems are now fully operational and used by individuals, general practitioners and hospitals in the US, and they reflect a new trend in which individuals take control over their own health information: personalised health.
You decide
When you create your own account at Google or Microsoft, you are in charge of who has access to your health information. As it is now, the hospital owns the information about the treatment it has provided and keeps it in the electronic patient records (EPR).
"When health institutions start using personal health systems like Google Health, the patient authorises who can access that information. In other words, the ownership of information and access control regime will be turned upside down", Hasvold continues.
For example, Kaizer Permanente – one of America's biggest hospitals – exports data from its EPRs to Google Health to inform and keep in contact with their patients.
Hackers’ biggest prize?
But could there be something rotten in the state of Denmark? Large companies such as Microsoft are notoriously prone to attacks by computer hackers and viruses. Without the proper security systems, the information about your heart condition or other illnesses could be out in the open. And you wouldn't want that...
Another important question is whether health researchers will have to pay global corporations to gain access to health information to do research.
"After all, these companies want to make a profit out of their knowledge, and they will be controlling the largest health information databases in the world. But if we don't watch out, research could be the loser in the new health world,” Hasvold says in closing."
Contact information
Per Hasvold, telephone +47 913 41 982 and email per.hasvold@telemed.no
 Tromsø Telemedicine Laboratory (TTL)
The TTL was established in 2007 as one of 14 research-centres sponsored by the Research Council of Norway. The article was printed in the annual report for 2008 and you can download the report by clicking the picture: |
| 
E-mail this
