By Daniel R. Matlis
Last week Google Announced the formation of a high powered Google Health Advisory Council. The mission of the council is to help Google better understand the problems consumers and providers face every day and offer feedback on product ideas and development.
According to the Wall Street Journals Health Blog “the company (Google) has been making noises about health care for a while, and there was some recent speculation that Google might be working on a way for people to store their medical records online.”
Google is great at finding things, but does not have a track record hiding them. Try Googling your home phone number or your name, and you’ll see what I mean. As a result, I would not feel comfortable storing my Medical Records on Google.
My solution for keeping medical records secure yet portable would be an n-Tegrity fingerprint secured, AES 256 bit encrypted USB drive.
Full disclosure, I’ve been working with n-Trance, the maker of the n-Tegrity device and have been impressed by its capabilities.
The convergence of technology in the fingerprint secured, AES 256 bit encrypted USB drive addresses the security and privacy issues associated with making Medical Record electronic and portable.
The owner’s fingerprint would unlock the device and would decrypt the medical record contained in the USB drive. Unlike password devices, even if the patient is unconscious, medical personnel could unlock and view the patient’s health records to be able to make timely and effective decisions.
I carry an n-Tegrity device and use it daily to keep sensitive data protected and secured. I would not hesitate to load my Medical Records if my doctor made them available.
Even if the device was lost or stolen, the records contained in the drive would be secure, and unreachable. In this event, or if the device was damaged, a backup utility would make it possible for me, and only me, to restore the contents of the drive onto a new one securely.