We are a culture of of contradictory preferences.

July’s International Journal of Internet and Enterprise Management publishes a report by Ajit Appari, PhD, research fellow at the Glassmeyer/McNamee Center for Digital Strategies at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, and M. Eric Johnson, director of the center, that the growth of electronic healthcare suffers from a judged lack of security.

As media reports of data breaches permeate the ether, health consumers’ fears over privacy and security multiply. Yet, the federal mandate in ARRA to effect digitized health records, can seem to run counter to securing such records, Appari and Johnson discovered.

So, like many things human – except for FaceBook, we prefer the benefits but loathe any consequent exposure.

More about this conundrum and fuller details of the report can be found here: CMIO.net report on Appari/Johnson Security Survey

In a related privacy issue, the government has arrived and is here to help. An April 1, 2010, initiative to assess risks and provide tools to combat threats against the health IT community, educate health IT users about security awareness, provide proper IT management guidance and create support functions has been followed by the ONC rolling out an 18-month effort to strengthen electronic healthcare cybersecurtiy. The ONC is requesting the public share its experiences with electronic health records (EHR). More on this effort can be found here: ONC Healthcare Initiative Privacy Anecdote Gathering

At this link, prove to yourself that while Security HIT Breaches happen, they aren’t apocalyptic by clicking on Health IT Mag’s link below the article.