“Your word is your bond.” It’s a phrase that draws its origins from the Third Commandment and demands a high degree of integrity. However, substitute “password” for “word” and “security” for “bond”, and the story is very different in the world of online authentication.

K.T. Oslin won Best Country Vocal Performance at the 1988 Grammies for a song about three girls who grew up to be ‘80s Ladies – one of whom was a “borderline fool” who crossed that border every chance she got.  While the song and, perhaps, the singer won’t be remembered today, this notion of being […]

While in San Francisco for the ABA annual meeting earlier this month, I had lunch with John Tomaszewski, the General Counsel of TRUSTe. At the end of a very good conversation on privacy, security and identity, I couldn’t help but think that Cloud computing, as it actually is supposed to work, raises a lot of […]

Imagine building a house without wiring it for electricity. Despite good intentions, millions of dollars, years of effort and, probably matching the historical norm of any visionary undertaking, a scandal or two, Ontario does not yet have an electronic health record (“EHR”). Despite some success with building networks and applications to support an EHR, the […]

Another bit of privacy got chipped away last month. In a place you might not normally look and wrapped in the flag of workplace safety. The implications are troubling.

“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Rich Boy”, 1926 In healthcare, they have more privacy.

A couple of weeks ago, Chantal Bernier, Assistant Privacy Commissioner of Canada, made a presentation in Toronto that included something that strikes me as a positive and noteworthy development. It was about how the federal Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (“OPC”) now looks at privacy impact assessments (“PIAs”).

A conversation about privacy and ethics last week led to an intriguing thought: should privacy officers become self-regulated?

This post was co-written by Michael Power and Anita Fineberg. Ontario’s Diabetes Initiative raises more troubling questions than could be addressed in one posting, so here’s Part 2.

A little over a month ago a post, written by Michael Martineau and Michael Power, was published on this blog (as well as eHealth Musings and ITWorld Canada) entitled “Dear McGill University Health Centre … About Your PHR”.  Shortly after it appeared, the authors were contacted by Philippe Panzini, Chief Technology Officer at MEDICAL.MD EHR […]