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information, there is a chance that member information may have errors or, after a certain period of time, become outdated.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: