this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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How has healthcare software like MyChart been enshittified? It's probably the tech I care the most about and the tech no one seems to talk about.
I would love to see someone discuss any enshitification trends with EHR software, as well as any initiatives to bolster FOSS stuff like OSCAR for hospital use cases (far as I know, it's pretty much just used at the clinic level, with more and more uptake of proprietary solutions for that use case as well here in Canada [obligatory Fuck Telus]).
https://fammed.mcmaster.ca/oscar-emr/
I'm not familiar with that particular piece of software. It may not be enshittified... yet. But it only take someone in the company to makes it to show the can make some ad revenue by plopping a bunch of ads on the site. Or even worse, they could start selling the data, which is particularly worrisome given it's medical data. Think about how much pharma companies spend on advertising and how valuable it would be to them to be able to do targeted advertising directed at people the know have conditions that they're selling treatments for.
The data on a site like that is ridiculously valuable. Sooner or later someone may decide to give a marketing company contracted by a big pharma company just one little peak at some data.
In the Untitled States, that data is protected via several statutes, HIPAA being the most widely known and robust governance over such information.
It's only illegal if you can't afford the fines. As businesses routinely prove, if your company is big enough they just budget for fines.
HIPAA fines are massive for now. So the cost risk doesn't work for them yet. But I'm sure some politicians will find a way to make it just the cost of doing business soon.
The other option is "It's too expensive to go after them." See: Taxes.
They will find a way around it. Maybe they will claim it doesn't count because it is tried to metadata and not an individual person.
HIPPA is no joke and companies actually don't fuck around with it. It's not worth it. It's one of the few pieces of consumer protection out there that has real teeth. Under HIPPA, you are expressly forbidden from using personal health information for anything unrelated to that patient's care, and companies can and are fined heavily for violating it.