Comment by hedora
4 years ago
I think the issue is that you're trying to optimize for patient privacy, quality of health care service, and doctor productivity.
The other commenter is trying to optimize for "doctor does not go to jail".
The two goals are mutually exclusive in this case.
Go to jail? Signal, for example, provides end to end encryption for all uses. Whatsapp does not appear to do that:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/whatsapp-end-to-end-...
It would seem like there would be HIPAA concerns with using a channel that does not guarantee privacy, and allows Big Corp to snoop on the content.
You seem to be forgetting who writes the regulations that regulate this stuff.
Less cynically:
I think signal is likely a superior choice from a privacy and usability perspective.
However, I imagine the hospital probably wants the chat logs to be an immutable part of my medical record. That's probably helpful in the case of bogus malpractice suits, for example.
In fairness, state-of-the-art practices store all this data in an enterprise storage array at the hospital (with a remote backup in a colo or something), not on hardware owned by Big Corp.
I think one person is trying to optimize for patient convenience. I strongly feel that this is one of those cases where patients do not think about their privacy for once second.
It’d be more interesting to meet the patients where they are and find some way to securely get those images into a medical file.