When Private Isn't (Quite) So Private
OK. So the world knows we buy Charmin bath tissue and M&Ms and like to shop at Lord & Taylor. But how would you like it if you went to the ER for an appendicitis attack and it showed up on your chart you'd had an STD in college? According to Melinda Beck of The Wall Street Journal, with all this digitizing of our medical info, "The sharing of Americans' health information is set to explode in coming years, with millions of patients' medical records converted to electronic form and analyzed by health-care providers, insurers, regulators and researchers." Many experts agree it may be next to impossible to safeguard all that patient data, or keep it from getting into the wrong hands. New rules may change some of this, but it's still a major threat. "The reality is, our ability to exchange electronic information is already well beyond our ability to control it," John Leipold tol Beck. He's CEO of Valley Hope Technology in Norton, Kan...