Consumer Alert: Significant medical data breach impacts 4.5 million patients

Community Health System suffers sophisticated attack from hackers Community Health Systems announced a serious data breach impacting 4.5 million patients across the US, spanning 28 states and covering information gathered over the past five years. The company announced the breach in its SEC filings, and described the breach as originating from China, and as an “Advanced

Video: HIE versus Fax… (Health Information Exchange Series)

This video is part 2 of a 14-part WPF video series on health privacy and health information exchanges. Doctors have been using fax machines to send and exchange patient records for years. We know that an HIE allows medical records to be shared electronically between health care providers. But how does an HIE differ — really — from faxes? What changes, beyond the obvious?

WPF Comments about Privacy and Big Data: Ethical Framework and Rights Essential

The World Privacy Forum filed comments with the U.S. Department of Commerce in response to its Request for Comments about big data, privacy, and the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. The White House Big Data report recognized that Big Data “raises considerable questions about how our framework for privacy protection applies in a big data ecosystem” and has the potential to “eclipse longstanding civil rights protections in how personal information is used in housing, credit, employment, health, education, and the marketplace.” This is among our concerns as well, and our comments focused on understanding big data’s benefits while drawing attention to where there are significant privacy risks that need to be addressed.