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Jialin C

Twitter worm was unleashed by 17-year-old Australian - 1 views

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    This article is about a 17-year old teenager had wanted to put Javascript code in a tweet. But then, others picked up the code and hacked Twitter by leading to viruses and pornography sites. It wasn't his intention to spread the worm to any users, but he wanted to see if it was possible to break the 140 words challenge on a tweet.
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    This news post provides information regarding to three strands of the ITGS triangle. It's based on home and leisure and due to many privacy issues. Stakeholders are the Twitter users who have posted tweets and received viruses on their computers. Privacy and anonymity determines whether a user wants to post certain tweets regarding him/her and the anonymity would be how this teen had caused the spread of this worm onto other's computers which was a severe consequence for many. Tweets are meant to be secure, however any users that have accessed Twitter and clicked on the harmful link which have caused damages to their computers. The lack of security measure is terrible because it's suppose to prevent employess and users from having access to hacking; but it had done the opposite. The topic of people and machine is the benefit of Twitter. Users who have tweeted are somehow 'addicted' to posting personal information online and to their friends. It's a daily habit and a routine that most people do almost every five minutes each day. Twitter hits 50 million tweets a day and not only that, but people are very much attached to their cyber life nowadays. The internet is definitely not the safest place to talk about your daily life and the worm was spread across the cyberspace because of a advertisement that advertised for colored tweets on profiles, which was a mistake to click on.
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    Poor guy! was my first thought, at the age of 17 and caused such a problem on twitter. This makes me think about how technology can go wrong so fast, which is why we shouldnt become so dependent on technology all the time! A simple java script on a tweet and bam! A worm was caught by all the other twitter users. And it wasnt even done intentiionally, imagine if it were done? The numerous things that can occur. Well thanks for sharing!
Jialin C

Google Reports on Government Requests and Censorship - NYTimes.com - 2 views

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    Google has came up with a tool in which people can view the government's censorships. It keeps track of how many times the government has requested for Google to take down certain information due to privacy.
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    Strand 1: 1.2: Security: Google isn't secure if they put statistics and a counter on how many times they were asked to take information down. 1.7 surveillance: Governments don't want to be monitored and therefore, many of them refuse to share whether or not their censorship demands. 1.3 Privacy and anonymity: Google created this tool which keeps track of how many different countries would want their government "secrets" and policies to be taken down; there fore, google does respect that to a certain extent. Although, many countries do make a huge number of requests for their data to be taken down. Strand 2: 2.6:This Google transparency tool can be used to view the demands and requests of data been removed by specific countries and their governments. Stakeholders: Google is the organization that created such a tool. And it's main purpose was to show the world that censorship and privacy is asked for by many. The governments around the world are asking for either data requests to be taken off, or data requests based on their country from the transparency tool. Strand 3: 3.4 Internet: it plays the main role of how Google puts up too much information and due to privacy and surveillance issues, the IT system is shown as a map that organizes the lack of information that can be seen by viewers and the amount of information that are taken off due to requests.
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    Please go back and "cache" this page. I see by the URL that this is a blog. Although the lines between bloggers and journalists are somewhat blurred these days, blogs are usually opinion pieces and not considered journalism in the same way as edited news items. For example, this summer, you blogged on the NY Times site. That wasn't "news" it was your opinion about what you read about what was happening.
Noreen C

More Than Half of Mobile Apps Not Secure, Report Says - 5 views

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    An article about the unsafe nature of many mobile phone applications including commerce and finance related apps. This article allows the reader to see the increasing problem of security holes of these apps and sites like Twitter who were hit with the same problems, such as "cross site scripting."
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    Security in this day an age has become a major problem. The protection of hardware, software, machines, and networks from unauthorized access is becoming increasingly harder because hackers have gotten smarter in identifying the security holes of these programs. Mobile phone applications are just one of their latest hits. More than half of the applications on mobile phones are considered unsafe and therefore vulnerable to security attacks. Third party codes were even more devastating with a "81 percent failure rate." Commerce and finance related apps did just as poorly, both exceeding just about the half way mark. The process of fixing these security holes has become quicker over, however, not quick enough. It takes sixteen days on average to fix the problems and this is rather long time in a society that can get and bit of information in the palms of their hands in nano seconds. Hackers are also going into other user's profiles, or creating fake profiles in order to spread "cross site scripting." This was recently seen as a problem for Twitter and it's users. Tweets were changed into different colors, and there were unwelcomed pop-ups that would appear to users when they clicked on a Tweet. This would then publish the original script on that user's page without their knowledge, or consent. This is a problem that has taken over mobile apps, resulting in "51 percent of all vulnerabilities." The stakeholders of this issue are mainly the users. However, it is also a problem for the companies who created the application and those who are fixing it when it goes down, if not the creator. In the world of applications on mobile phones, things are expanding quickly and largely. However, with this great expansion, there are downsides when more than half are deemed not secure. Although there are various apps that are safe, our need to have everything in our sight available to us, even the most seemingly useless app, has driven us to put our devices, privacy,security, and
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    Please go back and "cache" this page.
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    It will not let me, it says I need to upgrade my subscription in order to do so. Also, the last part of the comment is cut off. Here is the continuation: "authenticity at risk. The coolest apps that are so desired, many not be the coolest things on the market these days. Let's not let our wants surpass our judgment of these problems."
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    Actually, if you click on the link to the article (the one in blue) and bookmark it again (it won't loose your previous work) you can click the Cache box and it will actually cache it. Try it. Normally, you would cache it the first time you bookmark it, but that technique works after the fact.
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    In a way, downloading an app or downloading anything in fact is like interviewing a book or finding a reliable source. It's always better to pick from an author or publisher you know about. Usually, more well known companies will release an app and if there are a lot of people complaining about it, then they will fix it. It takes patience and control to wait for a better version to come out so that you know its safe. Additionally, people should take more caution into the apps they are using and what kind of information they are registering in it.
Joel Lubi

Study Says Chips in ID Tags Are Vulnerable to Viruses - 1 views

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    RFID is a technology which can create many new possibilities, as well as build upon existing ones. The technology can be applied to a variety of scenarios, but concerns rise due to problems with privacy and lack of security as it has been proven that viruses can be stored on the small 128 character capacity of the RFID chip. These viruses can be used to exploit whatever it is that the technology is implemented in. This could potentially cause problems such as some tags not getting scanned, or even all tags not getting scanned. The risk increases in other scenarios such as airports, where RFID technology could be very useful for streamlining and organizing the baggage transport process, but a single virus and the whole thing would be disrupted. Just as with computers, I'm sure that people will eventually figure out a way to protect from RFID-bound viruses to implement them for great purposes.
Mariam B

Another Day, Another RFID Trial-Debate about using RFID on DVDs - 0 views

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    This article discusses the issue of individual security and invasion of ones privacy through the use of RFID tags. With RFID tags on almost ever retail item, customers who are main stake holders, are questioning the motives of these tracking codes. A major item that is being tracked is a DVD from when it is first put into its cover and sent to the store, till the costumer purchases it. However the question remains, What is the purpose of this? Is it necessary to track how the costumer uses the items that they buy? Other stake holders include the large business corporations such as Walmart, who use these RFID codes to profit from studying the purchases and trends in other stores and areas. Additionally another stakeholder that is seen as a threat is the government who may eventually be able to spy or track down individuals based on these RFID codes on the items that they purchase. This issue relates to business and employment because companies are able to economically profit through this even though the individual privacy remains a threat. These RFID tags allow businesses to profit because they can use the codes to efficiently organize the purchasing of stock and selling of items. The RFID can be considered a network that allows the hardware which is the actual code to work. Without the network tracking and creating the code, the device is unable to function. Although the customer is able to open the wrapper such as in the case of buying a DVD and throw it away, the thought still remains of what will happen in the future with these tags? There is constant dispute and consideration on how the alternate user who is the customer that purchases these items, may become a victim of privacy invasion.
Noreen C

Keeping Secrets WikiSafe - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    WikiLeaks has led to several problems related to privacy and security of government data. The legal debate weighs whether the posting of this data is against Constitutional laws, but many others in the Government fear the magnitude of this problem. Some people ask, what would the founding fathers have done....but the world of the internet is a whole other ball field. The latest on the WikiLeaks threats claim that Assange still has more documents which were uploaded onto the website. However, the files are encrypted. Many people have access to these files, but because they are in cipher text, they cannot be read. As soon as Assange, or anyone who has access to the information publishes the Public Key, the encrypted documents will be decoded, using the same software that Assange used to encrypt it. If these documents have material in them that could threaten national security, then the USFG will have a stronger case against Assange on the basis of a privacy breach. Because of the high security, and the reliability of the encryption software, these documents have little value at the moment. The Obama Administration is clearly keeping an eye on the situation, because they wish to protect the privacy of the documents, but also because they want to find a way to take down the documents before they create damage. However, there is an extreme level of difficulty in decrypting the data, which is protected by a mathematical algorithm specific to the software that Assange initially used. The intersection of the privacy of the Government and the reliable security that Assange used comes to show that the IT world is constantly expanding, beyond the prediction of one business, or even the Government. But these Assange and the USFG aren't the only ones involved. Many people around the world are trying to attain access to these documents, primarily in the US in order to understand national secrets that have been held back from the public. The internet as a form of media has transfo
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    continued.....transformed the notion of what is private and what isn't, and clearly now more than ever privacy needs to be secured. Maybe the USFG should look into some high security protocols such as encryption, and their data files wouldn't be intercepted and posted on the internet.
Saida K

How to make sure your smartphone payments are secure - 0 views

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    This news article specifies the considerations of using a cellphone to make secure payments. In order to make secure transactions using one's cellphone, a certain procedure must take place. Of course, the mobile phone must have access to the internet, and will go to any website of their choice in which they find something they want to buy, or to simply pay a bill. Also, this can be done using an "application" such as PayPal. PayPal is technically more secure considering that a consumer would only have to write they're credit card information in one place. But with so many people using it, it becomes easier for hackers to access this data, especially with vast quantities of money in the savings. Afterwards, no matter which way you started a transaction, encryptions are always used to transform the that so that only the consumer and business company can read the transaction with the decryption. One possible stakeholder is the consumer whom is indeed effected by making payments using their mobile devices. It's only been recently that they began trusting the internet using a computer, but using the internet via cellphone is a new change that must take time to adjust to. But they are effected since hackers can easily take their money. Plus a third party, can occur during the process of the transaction while the consumer is using another window, and might not notice that they're information is not only going to the business itself. These are all issues of security.
Carmen M

Home Office Data Security: Protect Customer Info - And Your Small Business - 0 views

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    This article talks about Data security regarding information kept in a computer. The stakeholders in this case are the employee and the customer. The IT system is, like previously mentioned, a computer. The issue regarding the system is reliability. If you have a customers information such as credit card numbers and other personal data, then security and reliability definitely come up as an issue. Computers are prone to get viruses which could wipe out all the information stored on your hardrive. Hackers and other spyware can also be another concern. Your customer is trusting you with their information. The article also proposes a solution. The solution would be to have two separate computers, one for personal uses and the other for work. That way, eliminating visiting websites that might have viruses.
nicholas n

BlackBerry denies India email access deal as struggle continues | Technology | guardian... - 0 views

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    This is a news report that RIM(research in motion ) I denying claims that India is now able to access the messages that many send through RIM secure network. This access includes company messages. However RIM refutes these claims and states they don't have access to any of this information. This is one part of a greater story India's government is not the only government that had problems with RIM due to lack of equality of service and the fact that RIM has the best encryption on their messages. There are many stakeholders such as RIM who are running a business that desires to make a profit and realize on their reputation on security, any company that uses blackberry service. The government that wants to have access to the messages to protect their national security, and finally the average consumer that loves using blackberry for their everyday lives. for the primary stakeholder which is RIM social and ethical issues are security, and reliability and integrity. Security refers to the protection of the blackberries encrypted network. The reliability and security concerns RIM's reputation for their secure networks. the primary scenario in this case is business and employment from various points of view, and the IT system is the blackberry cell phones.
Elisavet M

Data Security Laws Seem Likely, So Consumers and Businesses Vie to Shape Them - 0 views

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    During 2005, political organizations advocated for strict laws implementing data security enforcement, as rising concerns stemmed out of alarming statistical studies and research, revealing identity theft, credit card frauds and hacking as emerging and terrorizing practices overtaking much of the internet realm. This article introduces the beginning of the rise in public awareness, as technology strongly began to redirect the business world into another more digital phase. It was during that year, the primary stakeholders, also known as the businesses ( participants of e-commerce that stored, verified and utilized private consumer data), vocalized their needs clarifying their desire for the creation of constraints in regards to the consequences or negative implications of passing certain bills (for data security). The past exemplifies the various influences the introduction of data security measures, passed by the government legislatures, had upon newly initiated businesses; among the most significant implications discussed were: the need to build a secure database for reliable storage of clientele digital data with the utilization of particular software as well as improving business organizational structure in order to maximize the rate of security notifications towards consumers based on a foundation of rigid security standards. Far from the adaptation to such implications, the political crisis of establishing solid ground for a new set of security data policies and standards became an overwhelming process for politicians, congress members in conjunction with consumer and data privacy groups that rivaled in attaining the responsibilities of passing the needed laws. The politicians (stakeholders, holding the role of administering governmental legislation to stabilize data security breaches), came into opposition with the concerns of many members of advocacy groups (stakeholders, holding the responsibility of supervising and publicly navigating the direction of th
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    continuation: the adjusted standards enforced by politicians). The problem of adhering to the instruction of newly created laws motioning businesses to appoint data security officers, draft policies, to comply with policies and procedures involving giving access to files in business databases for the Federal Trade Commission to check comes into collision with what most online businesses want to go through the process of doing. However, with the issue of security surfacing future consumer problems, as security breaches become major forces threatening the safe entering of digitally encrypted information (such as credit card codes), many companies become increasingly aware of the needed adherence to the strict security data laws, in order to continue profiting financially in order to keep the rate of consumer trust and payment increasing.
Joel Lubi

Google Extends Security Reward Program - 0 views

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    The article is about an interesting method that Google is using to improve its security over time. Hackers (Crackers) are often despised by many online businesses and cause major problems. However, Google has managed to turn the problem into a solution by offering rewards to hackers who are able to exploit the system and report the exploits to Google. With the given information, Google can improve its services to be more secure. Specifically, this article notes the success of the solution and Google's intentions of expanding the program to its web services. This is an ideal solution because all stakeholders benefit. Hackers are paid, Google can improve its services, and users can feel more secure about using Google's services.
Daniell S

Data Security Is No Longer an Option - 0 views

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    This article starts off with the actions of a small travel site. This article speaks of the price they had to pay to upgrade the security. This company has to make big changes to their security in order to do business with larger companies. In this situation there are both positive and negative impacts. One big negative impact is the price to pay for this upgrade in security. In order to be on par with the security of higher level businesses smaller businesses have to pay large amounts of money to gain this security. This would require a lot of faith in the big businesses from the smaller business. As said in the article "The connection, and everything transmitted over it - financial, customer and product data - has to be secure and out of the reach of hackers, cyber thieves and even disgruntled employees." This shows how secure the website has to be. This is so that bigger companies can trust the smaller companies to handle business. However, through this impact can come a positive one. By having security equal to those of bigger businesses customers will have an easier time trusting the company. Another issue that comes up is reliability. A question that can be asked is whether or not the security is strong enough against hackers? This would give customers right to question whether or not this website would be trustworthy or not. In this situation the important stakeholders would be the bigger businesses and the smaller businesses. In order to do business both companies need to have the same level security. This would require one or both companies to upgrade their systems greatly to be on par with each other. Another important stakeholder would be the customer. The customer would need to know whether or not they could use the website without worrying too much about being hacked. If the customer knew the security was stable it would make them more comfortable about using it.
Kim T

iTunes warning as thousands of fraudulent accounts are auctioned online - 1/7/2011 - Co... - 0 views

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    Purchasing songs, apps, movies, and etc on ITunes requires each user to have an ITunes account. Upon signing up for the account, a valid credit or paypal account must be entered to pay for any purchased items. These purchases are made using a SSL (secure socket layer) connection so that when the user sends their information to ITunes to set up an account, log in, or purchase an item, the information they are sending is encrypted.The sender is given a public key to show that he or she was the one sending the message and ITunes will get the private key. The data is encrypted using a code that will translate the data into a message incomprehensible to others if not decrypted using a private key. Once it has reached the ITunes database after being sent over the network, the private key will decode the message and proceed with the transaction.  However, the problem lies within the process of setting up an account. Many customers' itunes accounts are being hacked into and sold online to other people in China. Hackers are still able to find and intercept customers' information, such as their passwords or credit card number, and use it to sell to other people. Passwords may be too weak in some cases or authentication by the itunes store may be too weak. The issue of security is therefore involved as sensitive information can be accessed by others. The customers are affected since they are being charged for items that they are not purchasing. The company, Apple, is also affected negatively since their customers may not feel safe buying from them anymore and therefore losing business. Then there are the hackers who are benefiting in such a situation, profiting off of other people illegally.
nicholas n

U.S. Tries Open-Source Model for Health Data Systems - NYTimes.com - 1 views

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    This article is about the idea of putting all existing medical records into electronic form. This would cut the costs needed for storage of such information, this would also increase how fast a medical official can access the records of a sick patient. However, as listed in Strand 1, there are many positive and negative social/ethical issues. One such issue is security. By making the records digitized and put into the hospital database, people without the proper authorization would not be able to gain access to the data. This can also coincide with authenticity. The information that relates to the patient should be accessible by the patient. The patient would need to be able to get through the encryption of the data. Another social/ethical issue would be the equality of access, this would allow only certain people the ability to look at the data. Even with these positive social/ethical issues there are some negative issue. One negative issue would be integrity. There are people who can hack the encryption of this data and tamper with it. This would cause the data to be different in other places and a breach in security. This would be a great help to organizing data. Using a paper file system, the doctor would have to go through a lot of papers and cabinets to find the patient's medical history. By using a paper file cabinet documents are more likely to go missing or get mixed up with another patient's records. However, by using a database this data is much more organized. There is a smaller chance of losing the patient's data, by using back-ups the data could be easily restored. There is also a much smaller change or mixing up multiple patient's data. If the wrong data was use for the wrong person, the person may not have the correct medical treatment they need. With databases the information is much more organized. The patient's data can be found very fast, compared to a paper file system (this could take more than an hour depending on the amount of patients).
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    Continued...The hardware involved with creating databases in the health industry would be a DBMS Engine. This is also known as a Database Managing System. This takes the logical request from DBMS subsystems and converts them to physical equivalents. This also requires interactive processing. This replaces batch processing. This allows users to interact with data through terminals and view values online in real time. By having real time the doctors can give the patients what they need at the moment the patient needs it. The stakeholders in this specific case would be the hospitals adapting the database managing system and the patients whose information is stored in this database. If the database is tampered and there are not back-ups the patient would not have his/her medical history. This could cause the patient to be on a delay for an operation that is extremely important to their life. This could also place a lawsuit on the hospital.
Mariam B

Privacy Issue Complicates Push to Link Medical Data - 1 views

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    This article deals with the use of electronic health records in order to record medical information of patients. Congress wishes to pass a bill to enforce the use of electronic health records, however issues regarding the privacy of patients and information stored on these databases have arose. Electronic health records are used to record personal patient information such as name, age, address along with health sicknesses and symptoms. This also allows doctors to send e-prescriptions to the patient. However the computerization of health records triggers obvious privacy issues which prevent many hospitals to completely switch to using these electronic databases. Stakeholders of this technology include the patients whose medical information is being stored and sent on the databases, the hospitals and doctors that use the databases to track and send prescriptions to their patients, along with policy makers such as Congress and President Obama who promote the use of electronic health databases. The major stakeholder is the patient, whose private information is at risk by using these databases. Doctors can also use the electronic databases to send prescriptions to their patients for medicines or further appointments. Patient databases include sensitive personal information that may be at risk of being hacked or seen by an unauthorized user. In the article, solutions to these privacy issues have been proposed such as increased spending and investments in order to create solutions to privacy issues. Measures can be taken to safeguard medical information such as using encryption technology to secure private information that is sent online or kept on the hospital's computer database. This encryption would prevent unauthorized users from accessing and using patient information. However, in cases where this encryption technology fails to protect patient information, policies have been created that the patient must be notified if their personal information has been h
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    continued: have been created that the patient must be notified if their personal information has been hacked or seen by an outsider. Other policies have been enforced that give patients the ability to control and prevent hospitals from sending private information for research without their permission. These policies help prevent private patient information from being seen by unwanted individuals.
Noreen C

U.S. Tries Open-Source Model for Health Data Systems - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • easily and securely share information
  • A fancy electronic patient record, unconnected, is just an expensive way to capture data.
  • Getting many different health care providers and suppliers of specialized software to agree on how to do that is no simple task.
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  • The solution the group agreed to is essentially Internet-based e-mail and public key encryption technology, tailored for health care.
  • For health care technology companies, the data-sharing standards, experts say, should stimulate the market for electronic health records and allow them to focus their efforts on making their individual offerings more affordable and easier to use.
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    This article is primarily about setting standards and protocols so that an electronic health records could world easily and securely for many health care providers and suppliers. The reason the introduction of an EHR hasn't worked before, is that there were no data-sharing standards, which would ensure that the data is transmitted securely across the internet. These standards are also in accordance of many of the interests of all of the health providers and stakeholders involved, which was a major problem previously. Without the issue of connecting the EHR from provider to provider, then the records would be a "fancy...way to capture data," and it's full potential would never be recognized. However, these new standards and protocols, filled with secure transactions based on encryptions, have made the introduction of an electronic health record possible. There are many benefits to the use of an EHR, including productivity and financial improvement for the companies and the employees. For example, doctors/nurses no longer need to spend time pulling a patient's file, or writing the details of the visit afterwards. There are also fewer repetitive tasks, and improved communication between doctor and nurse, or doctor and another doctor. Quality of care may also improve because doctors have quick access to a patient's information, there is better monitoring and discovery of chronic illnesses, and doctors can return phone calls/ provide medication refills immediately. Also, in general, the electronic charts allow for a more efficient office, which leads to a less stressful environment and more attention on the patients' care rather than searching for their charts. This can only be done through the introduction of an EHR, leading to easier queries, instant reorganization, and file management that could be transmitted to both the patient and any other doctors. This minimizes the ambiguity of not having tests results from one doctor, and allows all doctors treating a p
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    patient to see all of the patient's history. This is important in having a correct diagnosis and treatment. However, there are also some drawbacks. Initially, doctors who chose to engage in the implementation of a EHR, see some decreases in productivity. This is because entering information and learning how to use the software takes some time. Some doctors also do not have the money to invest in such software and accompanying hardware to, and others no not want to because they are accustomed to their hand-written charts. There are also some security issues, leading to greater privacy issues. The EHR maintains very personal data about a patient, and if the records are breached, then the privacy of the patient may be put at risk. There is also the issue of interoperability, which was brought up in the article. Many of the companies in different countries wishing to engage in the implementation of EHR have different standards involving the usage. This could harm the usage of an international EHR.
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