Government Pushes To Create A New Health Internet

Hoping to provide the backbone for a grand plan to put the nation’s medical records online, federal officials have been quietly retooling an obscure government data-sharing service into a robust new Health Internet…

…Deven McGraw, a privacy expert at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, said she worries that private medical data could be bought and sold without restriction, for purposes ranging from hawking new medicines to denying someone a job based on their health status.

"We don’t have a rule that says, ‘Thou shalt not use personal information for marketing purposes without someone’s permission,”’ said McGraw, who sits on a committee that advises the government on health information technology. "We’ve got to pay closer attention to that."

—