Shoshanna Solomon reports:
The Israeli government on Sunday approved a National Digital Health plan, which, despite mounting privacy concerns, plans to create a digital database of the medical files of some 9 million residents and make them available to researchers and enterprises.
The government has vowed to protect the privacy of individuals and is touting the NIS 1 billion ($287 million) program as a huge boon to the medical research industry. But critics pointed to risks of a massive breach in patient confidentiality and urged the government to slow down.
Read more on Times of Israel. This is intended to be a major boost to the Israel economy.
Given that a database with almost the entire population’s details (the Agron Program) had been compromised years ago and was shared, is it only a matter of time until this database can be linked to the other one? Even if this new one requires consent, I can see why people have concerns about privacy issues.