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Wednesday, March 7, 2007
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Heise online reports on a very interesting action Microsoft is taking during the installation of WGA.
When you start WGA setup and get to the license agreement page but decided NOT
to install the highly controversial WGA component and cancel the
installation, the setup program will send your info and the fact that
you choose not to install WGA back to their servers.
In addition to that it seems that the setup program send some
information stored in your registry to http://genuine.microsoft.com/.
While it does not specifically identify the user, it looks like it does
send some identification of your computer and Windows version (see
picture) to Microsoft servers.
1:06:01 PM 
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The Health and Human Services Department has received mixed reviews for
its decision to insist that the next iteration of the Nationwide Health
Information Network (NHIN) allow patients to control who sees their
electronic health records on the network.
Dr. Robert Kolodner,
interim national coordinator of health information technology, said
March 1 that trial networks funded by his office should give "people
the capability to decide how they view, store and control access to
their own information. A person could say how that information flows to
specific entities or completely block the flow of information."
"If
they do what they say, it's a tremendous thing for privacy," said Dr.
Deborah Peel, founder of the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation. "It's
exactly what we've been talking about for a long time."
Peel
said she talked with Kolodner and learned that he wants to give
patients the ability to control what happens to their health
information, "down to the data field level." "I think his intentions
are fantastic," she said.
Asked whether such a network would be
technically feasible, Peel said the existing technology would support
that degree of granularity in controlling the flow of EHR data.
But
Mark Rothstein, director of the Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy
and Law at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, said he
doubts the HHS move will make a difference. "I don't really have a lot
of confidence that it would really have any effect whatsoever," said
Rothstein, a member of the official National Committee on Vital and
Health Statistics.
The reason Rothstein was less than
enthusiastic about the HHS move: Privacy problems are primarily policy
and legal issues in his view, not technology-based. Rothstein recently
testified before a Senate subcommittee, criticizing HHS for failing to
tackle privacy and other policy issues associated with development of
the NHIN. Kolodner's announcement doesn't address many of the policy
questions, he said.
Kolodner's office "has indicated no prior
interest in this concept," Rothstein said, suggesting that there is no
way to know how committed HHS is to its plans. Others have pointed out
it is one of the first HHS health IT initiatives that deviates from
plans outlined by Kolodner's predecessor, Dr. David Brailer.
11:56:32 AM
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© Copyright 2007 Paul Hardwick.
Last update: 3/18/07; 5:10:34 PM.
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