Trump’s latest healthcare push would be a massive gift to Silicon Valley — and could destroy your privacy rights

The tech industry and Silicon Valley have been lobbying the Trump Administration for policy changes that, they argue, would make it easier for patients in the U.S. to download their medical records onto their smartphones. But this change, journalists Arius Tahir and Adam Cancryn report in Politico, has privacy advocates worried that the privacy of millions of patients could be seriously compromised.

“If proposed policy changes go through, patients would be able to download their health records onto their smartphones and direct it to apps of their choice,” Tahir and Cancryn explain. “But there’s a major privacy pitfall: as soon as those records leave the software system of the doctor or hospital, they are no longer protected by HIPAA, the landmark medical privacy law.”

HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Continue reading.