Doctors: hackers threat to computerised medical files

By FRANCESCA MOLD health reporter

Doctors are worried that the trend towards storing patients' records online makes them vulnerable to computer hackers.

At a Business Information in Action conference in Wellington yesterday, Medical Council president Dr Tony Baird expressed concern about the risk of breaching patient confidentiality by using the internet and e-mail to communicate or store records.

He said it was impossible to guarantee that information stored electronically would be secure.

Doctors at the conference said they and their colleagues were worried about records being "electronically floated around."

"There is a lot of angst out there," said one.

Some doctors send patient referrals to colleagues via e-mail, and hospitals are introducing programmes designed to store medical records, laboratory tests and x-rays online.

The information can be accessed by staff throughout the hospital using passwords.

But hospital managers at the conference said paper records could also be looked at by unauthorised people, and computers at least allowed managers to track or audit who had got access to the system.

Dr Baird yesterday outlined a series of concerns the Medical Council had about telemedicine, including the inability to control rogue practitioners who treated patients via e-mail.

He was concerned at the lack of personal contact doctors had with patients when they treated patients through e-mail, and the fact that in many instances drugs were being prescribed in situations where a physical examination should have been done first.

"In this situation the patient could be at risk. It is also possible information may have been falsified and doctors have no way of knowing exactly who has sent the message [e-mail]."

In Australia, there had been cases of teenagers buying anti-epileptic and Alzheimer's drugs over the internet because they thought the drugs would make them more intelligent.

Dr Baird pointed out that New Zealand doctors giving advice to overseas patients could be subject to civil litigation laws in the patients' home countries if an error was made.

He also questioned the quality of some of the medical information available on the internet, saying it was often difficult for people to judge its accuracy.

Cases had arisen of patients choosing to follow medical advice from the net instead of that provided by their doctor. "To only get information from the internet is not a good thing. The Medical Council has no desire to restrict the use of the internet when it is helpful, but we have concerns about the way it is being used at times."