CLOUD: Consortium for Local Ownership and Use of Data, Inc.

Consortium for Local Ownership and Use of Data, Inc.
The Power of People. Connected.

Doctors:

I've heard about electronic record keeping for years. What makes CLOUD different?

CLOUD focuses on people first and records second. Electronic health records are designed to help automate business processes. CLOUD is designed to improve the level of professional service you can provide for your patients -- not only by making it faster, easier, and less expensive to use patient information to do your job, but by giving you better information to understand and more time to spend with your patients.

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Posts Tagged Privacy

The WSJ’s Privacy Debate: Moving Beyond the False Trade-Off

Aug 9

Posted by Gary in CLOUD Standards | No Comments

This past weekend, the Wall Street Journal published two more thoughtful columns in their series on privacy.  Nicholas Carr “penned” an excellent piece titled, “Tracking Is an Assault on Liberty, With Real Dangers,” and Jim Harper penned an equally compelling column, “It’s Modern Trade: Web Users Get as Much as They Give.”

In a weird twist of political philosophy on privacy and liberty, I agree and disagree with them both.  However, I disagree not because Nicholas and Jim are wrong, but because I do not believe that we must accept the assumptions behind their arguments.   Read the rest of this entry »

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Digital Debacle for EHRs in Britain: The Challenge of Using 19th Century Thinking to Solve 21st Century Problems

Mar 15

Posted by Gary in CLOUD Health | 1 Comment

Last week’s Daily Telegraph in the UK reveals the challenges we will face with EHRs in the United States if we do not change our perspective on the solution before cementing 19th century approaches into rules at HHS. “Patient’s Medical Records Go Online Without Consent,” by Kate Develin does an excellent job of looking at the implications of seeing this as a records problem rather than a patients problem.  EHRs divorced from the patients to whom they belong is at the heart of the digital debacle in Britain.

The following quote is at the very heart of the privacy issue:

The “summary” records contain basic medical information including illnesses, vaccination history, and could include medication patients have been given. Ages and addresses are also included. (emphasis added)

The issue with privacy on the Internet today is that the data silos into which our records are poured not only include What I Am™ but Who I Am™.  The combination of critical health information Read the rest of this entry »

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A SWIFT View of an “Identity Rights System 3.0″

Mar 15

Posted by Gary in CLOUD Standards | No Comments

Although I might quibble with the idea that CLOUD’s vision is limited to identity rights, Peter Vander Auwera, Innovation Leader at SWIFT and member of Innotribe, has posted quite a compelling overview of eIDs.  With the start of the European eID Interoperability Conference 2010 this week, his Identity Rights System 3.0 post is a timely review of where we have been with privacy and identity rights.  It is worth a full read, as are all of his posts at his personal blog.

Although Google Buzz has fixed its highly visible privacy flaw that occurred at launch, this episode is another indication that privacy must be woven into the fabric of the Internet, rather than a term of service by vendors.  The challenge ahead of us is not just a technological one but a philosophical one.  At its heart, the question is “who owns ME?”  CLOUD’s goal is to build the technology architecture that makes it possible for us to have “Local Ownership and Use of Data.”

Peter at SWIFT does a brilliant job of explaining how and why this is different than the eID movement and how CLOUD can propel all of these efforts forward by ushering in a new era of ME 1.0.

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Is Privacy a Uniquely Facebook Issue?

Dec 15

Posted by Gary in CLOUD Standards | No Comments

The past few days have seen a renewal of the conversation about privacy on Facebook. Articles of note include Privacy Advocates Slam Facebook Change and How Facebook is Making Friending Obsolete.

Protecting privacy isn’t a challenge unique to Facebook. It was around long before the invention of HTML and Web sites 15 years ago, but those developments made the challenge acute. The pre-Web Internet was about connecting people directly, but the Web caused a reversion to publishing and broadcasting models. The Web and HTML have contributed to the growth of the Internet, but their main side effect has been to force us into silos to connect with each other. Facebook, with 350 million users, is one impressive silo, but more than 1.7 billion Internet users are spread among millions of other silos.

So, what does this mean for privacy? Read the rest of this entry »

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Express Scripts data breach: Isolated Incident or Endemic Problem?

Oct 19

Posted by Gary in CLOUD Health | 2 Comments

Express Scripts data breach may have hit 700,000 victims

SC Magazine | Chuck Miller | October 1, 2009

Last year’s data breach of St. Louis-based Express Scripts may be more serious than initially believed.

In November 2008, the major pharmacy benefit management firm said it received an anonymous letter that included the names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and, in some cases, prescription information of 75 members. The writer or writers threatened to release millions of more records if the business failed to pay an unspecified sum of money.

In the last two months, based on new information from the extortionists, Express Scripts began notifying more than 700,000 victims of their personal information may have been compromised.

CLOUD Take: It is interesting that a data breach that affected 700,000 people is perceived as a breach of Express Scripts.  Although the point of loss may have been systems at Express Scripts, there were 700,000 breaches, not one. Read the rest of this entry »

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Wired: Is Online Privacy a Generational Issue?

Oct 3

Posted by Gary in CLOUD Health | No Comments

“It seems like every time I talk to people about privacy, there’s a feeling that younger users of online tools simply don’t care about the issue. Often, I am asked why privacy advocates like CDT push government and industry to protect privacy more robustly- when ‘no one cares’? In short, people seem to be asserting that digital natives like myself do not value privacy online. While this point is oft repeated, I think that this argument is flawed, and does not address the subtleties of privacy in the cloud, social networks, and other new online technologies. Simply put, these technologies are giving digital natives (really, all users) greater control over their information – and we use it.”

CLOUD Take: CLOUD, Inc. agrees with Heather West, policy analyst at the Center for Democracy & Technology, and writer of this guest post at Geek Dad.  The time for greater control of our information has arrived, and the locus of that control should not be at the website but instead at the user, the individual.

Read the rest of this entry »

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