‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything::The term describes the slow decay of online platforms such as Facebook. But what if we’ve entered the ‘enshittocene’?
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]).
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.
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.
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.
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.