Personal Privacy
and Access to Medical Databases
With the rapid advances in the computerization of medical data, the question of the protection of medical records privacy has begun to arise. Storing a large amount of sensitive information in a central location (databases) could open the door to "invasion of privacy" issues that were not as common as with the keeping of paper files. People are beginning to ask some important questions:
"How private are my medical records?"
Who has access to your medical records?
How is the information on your medical record being used?
What are some advantages to having a medical database?
What are some disadvantages to having a medical database?
What does the government has to say about all this?
Some suggestions as to how to keep it truly private.