Canadians value the right to choose who they share intimate health information with. This right is now under threat. "E-Health" is coming.
E-Health will create a giant system of electronic health records that will eventually be accessible across the entire country. These government repositories of citizens' health information are promoted as likely to make health care safer, cheaper and more efficient.
But there's little evidence to support those claims.
Governments have a terrible track record of safeguarding information on a single laptop, let alone huge concentrations of valuable, highly sensitive data that will attract sophisticated hackers and criminals and be available through thousands of access points.
We are told that Canadians support e-health and yet only 33 per cent of Canadians find it very or somewhat acceptable to have some (core) clinical data from a patient record stored and managed by local regional health authorities or agencies.
A proper e-Health system must be built on informed consent, and anyone who participates must be able to decide for themselves what information gets shared with whom.
Automated summary from: The Vancouver Sun
