A billion medical images are exposed online, as doctors ignore warnings

[ck4829]

Every day, millions of new medical images containing the personal health information of patients are spilling out onto the internet.

Hundreds of hospitals, medical offices and imaging centers are running insecure storage systems, allowing anyone with an internet connection and free-to-download software to access over 1 billion medical images of patients across the world.

About half of all the exposed images, which include X-rays, ultrasounds and CT scans, belong to patients in the United States.

Yet despite warnings from security researchers who have spent weeks alerting hospitals and doctors' offices to the problem, many have ignored their warnings and continue to expose their patients' private health information. "It seems to get worse every day," said Dirk Schrader, who led the research at Germany-based security firm Greenbone Networks, which has been monitoring the number of exposed servers for the past year.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/billion-medical-images-exposed-online-220054963.html

[SCVDem]

1. How secure is the VA?

[Captain Zero]

5. What about Trumps MD With the windows xp system?

Or the dr at Bethesda ?

[drmeow]

9. based on when I worked there

Probably reasonably secure.

[SCVDem]

10. That sounds like

Those TV commercials with the Doctor.

Worried?

Yeah!

Me too!

We'll figure it out.

Sounds like the current administration, eh?

[BarbD]

3. Guess I'm naive. What do they to with the info?

[pazzyanne]

4. What ever they want to!

It can affect getting or keeping a job, financial dealings, renting , etc.

[BarbD]

6. Thanks

I'm 82 and have been out of the corporate environment for a long time. I understand how some of this information could be damaging. Frankly, considering the multitude of data in clouds, it seems to me that the very volume of information would make it difficult to access on an individual basis.

Of course marketing is a different story. I suppose some enterprising person would take time to organize and sort the data and sell it to interested parties. Sleezy is the word I would use.

[pazzyanne]

8. I like your "sleezy" comment.

Very descriptive and accurate.

[csziggy]

7. Many of my medical providers are setting up patient portals

And are getting increasingly insistent that I register with them. At least one of the offices now does not allow online bill payment unless I register. So instead of the convenience of paying quickly online, I take their billing office personnel time to pay that way. Since I almost never write checks anymore, that is a nuisance.

They want me to check on the reports they write online and to provide them with updates on my treatments.

I have no interest in doing that - if I am sick or recovering from a procedure I don't want to read all of that info online. I want to talk to one of the medical professionals that I am seeing regularly as I heal. As much as I can I am refusing to join their little online communities. But I am getting the feeling the only I will be able to make or check on my appointments will be through their patient portals. At that point I will have to find new doctors, I guess.

I already had a problem with one office sending texts to confirm appointments - but their system was sending them to my landline and apparently ignored the messages sent out to indicate the phone they reached was not text capable. At the time I did not have a cell that received a signal here at home so I never gave that office my cell number.