Would you want all of your health information online if you lived in an authoritarian police state? Especially one where the government controlled the internet?
That is now an option for people in China, with the announcement by Microsoft that their HealthVault product/service is now available in China. As Fast Company perhaps too delicately puts it:
HealthVault allows individuals to store all of their personal health information in a special account online, but which is also accessible by relevant providers at hospitals, fitness facilities, and, of course, the government.
Millions of Chinese families have quietly exceeded the government’s brutal one-child policy that includes forced abortions and sterilizations, as well as fines for families having the audacity to exercise that most basic human right — having a child, or more than one child (or more than two children in certain rural areas where a second child is sometimes allowed). The last thing these families want is to digitize their family health records to make things easier for the police and tax authorities.
Ditto for dissidents or anyone else who might cross the Communist Party, which maintains one-party rule. Knowing everything about one’s personal health history and needs makes it easier for oppressors to oppress: to deny coverage, to blackmail, to track, to punish, to kill.
In short, Microsoft’s HealthVault is a dictatorship’s dream, and a captive populace’s nightmare.
Category: China, Government control, Health care, Privacy
Tags: abortion, HealthVault, Microsoft, one-child policy, personal health information