A Shared Medical Database With an Eye to Privacy Protection

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Imagine if there was one database that had all your medical history in one place. Wouldn’t this be a great tool in the case of an emergency. A doctor could quickly get a hold of all the information that he or she needs to properly diagnose any condition you might have. You wouldn’t have people getting conflicting prescriptions from different doctors. In short it would be a paradise, right?

Maybe not. Usually when these central databases are created, you (a) don’t know anything about it or (b) don’t have the ability to control what’s in the database. Your credit report is one such example of the later database. If you want it updated, you have petition the reporting agency and it could take months for the problem to be resolved.

Six huge companies - Applied Materials, BP America, Cardinal Health, Intel, Pitney Bowes, Wal-Mart - have banded together to create this database. The organization is Dossia. They promise that you control the data and share only the details that you choose to. I applaud them for putting the power in the consumer’s hands for a change.

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