June 11, 2007

Privacy Questions Abound With E-Health Records

Privacy groups are sounding alarms as the nation's largest insurance companies finalize plans to allow millions more customers to post their health records on the Internet. About 100 million insurance customers in the U.S. have access to Web-based tools, but companies don't have an estimate of how widely they are used. Insurers hope to at least double the technology's reach by the end of next year. Privacy advocates say there's no guarantee that the records will be safe from hackers. Some worry that patients may refuse to disclose some illnesses to their doctors to keep documents out of databases.

E-health records raise privacy alarms, Associated Press, June 11, 2007.