Healthcare web portals provide information about personal health, healthcare practitioners and facilities, and drugs and medical equipment. Their services to members may include an online personal health record of medical history, drug allergies, previous prescriptions and other medical information through the Web. Other possible member services include referrals to healthcare practitioners, clinics and hospitals, and medical insurers, and an online pharmacy that fills doctor’s prescriptions as well as selling non-prescription drugs. In order to use their services, you need to provide personal information as well as a login and password.
The online personal health record can save time for members when consulting a new doctor. Instead of dictating their entire medical history, the member can simply refer the doctor to the online record. Portal members may receive discounts on fees from healthcare practitioners, clinics, and hospitals. They may also receive discounts at the on-line pharmacy.
By providing personal information to a healthcare portal, you gain potential benefits but lose some extent of privacy. The impact on your privacy depends on the portal’s policy. Since the portal retains all member information, there is a chance that member information may have errors or, after a certain period of time, become outdated. Further, the portal may use member information for other purposes, such as analyzing the member’s web-usage patterns. Finally, it is possible that unauthorized persons (intentionally or unintentionally) get access to the personal information stored in a portal.
Consider a selection of healthcare portals that differ in their privacy policies and the benefits that they possibly provide. All of the portals ask members for the following personal information during registration:
1st Dimension: Promotion.
Promotions are often offered to provide customers an incentive to try out a new product or service. Healthcare portals typically offer a discount for your first purchase in the online pharmacy. For our scenarios, the healthcare portals offer a discount of $5, $10, or $20. This is a one-time promotion.
2nd Dimension: Time Savings.
Consumers vary in their visit frequency. For our scenarios, we ask you to think of yourself as a customer that visits the healthcare portal either once a day, once a week, or once a month. You can customize the healthcare portal so that it displays the topics of your interest. For example, it may show allergy sufferers what the pollen count for grasses in your zip code are. Alternatively, it could keep you informed about the current air pollution and ozone level in your city.
While customization requires giving up some personal information, registering saves you time when inquiring air travel fares. For example, assume that it would take you 3 minutes to search for the pollution and ozone level manually (without registration) and that it would take 1 minute to log into the healthcare portal. If you visit the healthcare portal daily, it takes 2 minutes longer to search for the pollution and ozone level manually than logging into the website, you will save 8 hours and 20 minutes in a year (2 minutes x 5 days a week x 50 weeks) when you register with the healthcare portal. If you visit the healthcare portal weekly, you will save 1 hour and 40 minutes per year when registering over typing it in manually. If your visit frequency is monthly, you will save 24 minutes per year.
3rd Dimension: Secondary Use.
Websites may state in their privacy policy what they intend to do with your personal information and your interaction with the website. For example, the healthcare portal may analyze your web-usage data to optimize the website design or to learn about your preferences for products or services. This type of analyzes are called ‘Secondary Use’ as they do not facilitate the primary purpose of the healthcare portal, which is providing healthcare information and facilitating purchases. For our scenarios, the healthcare portal will state either that your information will not be used for any purpose other than providing healthcare information and facilitating purchases (i.e., no secondary use) or that your information may be analyzed for other purposes, such as revealing your web-usage.
4th Dimension: Error.
Websites often allow customers to review their personal information after it is saved. This option is often provided to correct mistakes or update personal information. However, many websites do not offer this option at this point. For our purpose, the scenarios will state that the healthcare portal will either provide no opportunity to review your personal information for mistakes or provide the option to review your personal information and correct mistakes.
5th Dimension: Improper Access.
Websites typically guard the data from intrusion from the outside. However, within a company the data is often accessible to many people in various departments. For example, the personal data may be accessed by the IT department that stores the data as well as by the marketing & sales department that may use the data to tailor their offerings. Some online retailers restrict access to the data internally to authorized personnel. These people often have training in privacy issues. For our purpose, the scenarios will state that the healthcare portal will either have no policy on access to personal information or provide access to personal information only to authorized personnel.
The following scenarios describe portals that differ in the privacy policy and your anticipated usage of the portal. Here is a summary of the portal characteristics:
1. Promotion. For signing up you obtain a discount from the online pharmacy for your first purchase of
§ $5
§ $10
§ $20
2. Time Savings. You anticipate to be a repeat visitor of the website for pollution and allergy information. You estimate that you will return to the portal:
§ Once a day, realizing time savings of 8h 20min per year
§ Once a week, realizing time savings of 1h 40min per year
§ Once a month, realizing time savings of 24min per year
3. Secondary Use. Regarding the analysis of personal information and visits the portal will state either:
§ Your information will not be analyzed
§ Your information may be analyzed to review your preferences
4. Error. The portal will have provide either:
§ No option to review your personal information for mistakes
§ Option to review your personal information and correct mistakes
5. Improper Access. Your personal information will not be accessible to people outside the company. For access from within the company, the portal will state either:
§ No policy on access to personal information
§ Access to personal information only by authorized personnel, who have been trained in privacy issues
Below you should see a list of 18 choices that are described by various combinations of the above five attributes.
Sort the following 18 choices of healthcare portals from "Most Preferred" to "Least Preferred" by clicking on a choice and dragging it up or down in the list.
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