The Smart Med Card: Keeping You Safe in More Ways Than You Realize

That's right everybody - we're Two For Two on the re-posts har har har. My eyes and ears across the county, in association with The Smart Med Card(r), are nice enough to keep me informed when news breaks, and after reading, re-reading, and reading again for good measure the article sent to me yesterday afternoon, I have formulated the perfect Public Service Announcement about your Medical Records.

You unlock this door with the keys of ctrl+(home). Beyond it is another dimension - a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both ones and zeros, of things and ideas; of 'OH FIRETRUCK - WHY ARE MY MEDICAL RECORDS ON GOOGLE? You've just crossed over into the uh-oh zone. " 

Are you prepared to pick up the pieces and suffer the repercussions of your life becoming available online to employers, insurance agencies, blackmailers and scammers via information-leaks? You see, your medical records, whether you like it or not, will be electronically available by 2014, but you have options. Either you take control or someone else will. Do you trust large, third-party vendors and businesses to keep your information safe more-so than yourself? Think carefully before you make this decision.

Ok, my nerdy-deed of the day is done. Here's the story.

'Until recently, medical files belonging to nearly 300,000 Californians sat unsecured on the Internet for the entire world to see.' [1]

Further along the line we see:

'The personal data was discovered by Aaron Titus, a researcher with Identity Finder who then alerted Hecht's firm and The Associated Press. He found it through Internet searches, a common tactic for finding private information posted on unsecured sites.

The data were "available to anyone in the world with half a brain and access to Google," Titus says.

Titus says Hecht's company failed to use two basic techniques that could have protected the data — requiring a password and instructing search engines not to index the pages. He called the breach "likely a case of felony stupidity."' [1]

You need to understand that you do have control over who gets access to your records. Those 300,000 people could have taken control of their medical information and mitigated this whole ordeal with only the cost of The Smart Med Card.

The Smart Med Card is a device that is as secure as YOU make it. It allows you to manage your Electronic Health Records on a very secure (validated, mind you) website. Best of all, the card's content is only viewable to those you give access to. Without The Smart Med Card and your consent to manage your own health, you could very well be setting yourself up for the devastation from the mistakes that WILL happen (I promise - as a Computer Engineer I know that there are going to be a lot of issues that won't be noticed unless something bad has happened). I highly suggest you read the full article posted below. 2014 is not far off, and if you don't want to get into the crossfire of the mishaps and mayhem from the Medical Record format switch, I highly suggest you re-evaluate your spending priorities. What's a few dollars now compared to potential thousands later on when you are trying to pick up the pieces of your 'open-book' life?

Source:
[1]Robertson, Jordan. "New data spill shows risk of online health records." USA Today | Tech. USA Today, 22Aug. 2011. Web. 23 Aug. 2011. <http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2011/08/New-data-spill-shows-risk-of-online-health-records/50086552/1>.