This is troubling. Jeffrey Schweers reports from Florida: State police brandishing firearms Monday raided the home of Rebekah Jones, the former Department of Health data scientist who built the state’s much-praised COVID-19 dashboard before being fired over what she said was refusing to “manipulate data.” “They pointed a gun in my face. They pointed guns at…
Category: Healthcare
Researchers Explore Privacy Techniques to Protect Against Re-Identification of Genomic Information
Libbie Canter of Covington & Burling writes: It’s the stuff of science fiction: adversaries extract DNA information from a cup of coffee or postage stamp and use it infer one’s most private traits. However, a recently released study entitled, “Data Sanitization to Reduce Private Information Leakage from Functional Genomics” discusses how this can be achieved,…
Planned database of Victorians’ health information ‘trashes privacy’
Henrietta Cook reports: The private medical information of every Victorian who has used public hospitals and health services will be collected by the Health Department, stored on a database and accessed by clinicians under a controversial state government plan. The proposal, which was quietly unveiled in September, has attracted criticism from legal, consumer and public…
Column: Do you really want Amazon’s new drugstore knowing your medical condition?
David Lazarus writes: For months, Amazon has been signaling that it planned to open an Amazon-branded online pharmacy to compete with the likes of CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid. This week, it did. For many consumers, this represents greater convenience and the possibility of paying less for prescription drugs. It also means what little privacy you…