After reading this article in Computer World titled Opinion:  EHR is health care reform we can all agree on I agree that paper medical records can be cumbersome however I disagree with the author’s opinion that imputing medical records into a database would be any better. We all know that data output is only as good as data input. There would be no guarantee that a central database would be any better at providing correct information to an unfamiliar hospital or doctor’s office. The author is quoted as saying “According to an April 2009 survey in the New England Journal of Medicine, only 1.5% of U.S. hospitals have comprehensive electronic records systems, and only 8% have basic systems that cover at least one clinical unit.”

Of utmost importance to me, is my right to privacy. There are some records I do not care to share with all of my doctors and their office personnel. Who will be slated with the painstaking task of entering existing records? Will our records be outsourced to a third party in order to be entered into the database? In another Computer World article titled How to effectively contract your network privacy the author mentions that “data held by a third party, such as a cellular service provider or a hosting provider, can be demanded by government agents without a warrant. Who will ensure that our records are accurate? Will the patient have the right to access their records and make corrections and changes? And what about security? This author also refers his readers to a NetworkWorld link regarding Health Privacy and security breaches.

In short, I am very uncomfortable with the idea that my personal records could be accessed outside of my doctor’s office and hope that there is an ‘opt-out’ system I can subscribe to.