Image via WikipediaThe challenges of privacy 2.0 (see previous post) are here and now. From the Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report:
Physicians and nurses who maintain blogs are not taking sufficient measures to protect the identity of the patients about whom they write, according to a study published last week in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, the Los Angeles Times reports. For the 2006 study, author Tara Lagu — a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar and an internal medicine specialist — examined 271 blogs that were maintained by physicians or nurses.
The study found that about 65% of the blogs are written anonymously. The remainder included identifying names of their authors. About 45 blogs, or 17%, “included sufficient information for patients to identify their doctors or themselves,” the study said. About 42% of the blogs contained accounts of private interactions with patients and three blogs displayed photographic images of patients that easily made them recognizable. Despite only a few blogs including conflict of interest disclosures, 11.4% of the blogs contained postings that promoted specific pharmaceutical or medical device products.
