[LINK] Hospital use of SMS for Appointment Reminders

[Birch, Jim]

Tom Worthington wrote:

> Perhaps something as simple as authorised staff being able to access
the 
other hospital's records using a secure web interface would be 
sufficient.

Even this is problematic.  Would you require authorisation from the
patient? Most current hospital systems allow access to specific resource
types for authorised users but don't allow granularity at the specific
patient level.  On a one-off basis you might allow read only access to
your data for a related organisation and log accesses.  For the full
(online) eHealth record you will need authorisation for patient/provider
pairs.

This area is a privacy minefield.  Most people would be happy to
automatically share their medical record with any and all of their
providers, on the basis that it will improve treatment and reduce the
number of repeat questions.  Some people want to protect some
information.  There are some records that can carry a stigma, like
attendance at a mental health facility or a prison medical service.
There's also a small subset of patients in the health system who use
different identities at different locations and times for an interesting
a variety of reasons, and some who may be unclear on what demographic
data they gave last time or what it really is.    

Jim


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