My recent experience was the opposite, hospitals being unable to find my daughter's immunization record, although it definitely existed, and indeed turned up eventually.
One major worry I have is this "permanent record" that is starting to exist - already exists? I went to the hospital for an emergency about a year ago, and they reviewed my medical history. The nurse, not exactly an ad for the profession, said I had a record of a particular condition. When I stated it was to do with my pregnancy and was not a long-standing or permanent situation, she merely raised her eyebrows. So now I have a "history" of a condition - even though it happened more than 12 years ago... How on earth do you combat that? And how often does this occur, on a much worse scale, with a terrible impact on peoples' health insurance, employment, and criminal records, among other things?
@DukeW "Is it too late to encrypt my life?" I'd say it is. You've already established a very long virtual trail. However, I do recall seeing a book written by someone who said his business was helping people disappear, indicating it is possible to break off from your past record. But you can only pull it off in another place and with another identity.
Like most government programs, this whole mess will become a morass of security violations and overweening abuse. Having worked this sector, I can tell you that HIPAA has been and continues to be what my dad would call a "cluster fornication," and the politically driven HITECH is a train-wreck in slow motion. You can see it coming, you can try to shield your eyes, but there's no way you're not going to be hip-deep in nastiness Real Soon Now. Electronic record keeping has the potential to ease access and cut waste, but also the potential for massive exposure and loss of people's personal information. For better or worse, the change is upon us, so get ready to surf a tidal wave of entrails and offal. Is it too late to encrypt my life?
Having delayed on implementation, a number of states are now abdicating responsibility and leaving it to the federal government. If the law had imposed federal run health exchanges in the first place, I'm sure it would have been hailed as an attack on state powers. Ironic.
@Mansu "Without deadlines how can you ensure availability for everyone" Yes, that reminds me of King's "Justice delayed is justice denied." You can't just always give more time.
@Anthony - while I agree many countries are behind the USA, several countries are far ahead of the USA in the adoption of health IT. Watch CNN's Fareed Zakaria's episode to get more information on this. Without deadlines how can you ensure availability for everyone?
Mansur : I dont think there should be a dealine as such since things are in proper order for Health IT in USA. I have seeen many countries strugling to survive and when you compare them with USA, its a paradise.
Deadline or no deadline, government is no stranger to blatantly delaying and failing to comply with IT deadlines.
For instance, the US federal government was supposed to have upgraded all of its systems to IPv6 by June 30, 2008. It still has not done so.
Granted, Obamacare may be fueled by greater political motivation than IPv6 implementation, but I'm not surprised at this deadline extension -- and I would be unsurprised by further delays.
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Social networking sites and search engines continue to hone the tools they use to help advertisers spread their messages, measure results, and avoid fraud.
The US National Security Agency learned the hard way that it can be dangerous to give a contractor too much money and access, with too little scrutiny. The NSA and other government agencies hire tens of thousands of contractors
a year to analyze data. Edward Snowden -- who revealed himself as the NSA leaker after fleeing the country -- was one such contractor, reportedly holding a $122,000 salaried position at Booz Allen Hamilton at the time of his departure.
Big-data and analytics tools enable marketers to understand customers as individuals, identifying unmet needs and addressing each customer as a "segment of one," says John Kennedy, VP corporate marketing, IBM.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Monaco kicked into high gear today, and we've already begun to see news emerging from that lovely city-state by the sea.
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