If OnHealth were to discover that WellMed was violating the terms of the contract, it would sue the company, Farwell said. But having adamantly said that it protected its users' privacy, OnHealth conceded that the California HealthCare Foundation report had its pluses. We've taken the admonition and you'll see us talk about what happens with the health risk assessment survey upfront during the registration process. The company uses DoubleClick's Dynamic Advertising Reporting Targeting service, but the service does not allow the company to individually identify users when they click on advertising banners. What physicians can do Because much of the problem of information leakage comes when users are volunteering information about themselves, one obvious way to protect privacy is to not give up that information in the first place if you don't have to, experts say.
Cookies are pieces of software that use a unique number to identify a user.
That identifier can be tied to a person' s name if a site has the user's name. Cookies are used to identify users by their first name when they return to a site. To protect their privacy, doctors also can set up their Web browsers so that their computers will either reject or alert them when a site attempts to store cookies in their hard drives. Furthermore, physicians can use existing encryption software to protect both the privacy of patients and the confidentiality of medical records, Dr. Palmisano added. Back to top.