Storing medical information below the skin’s surface (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Storing medical information below the skin’s surface (2019)

news.mit.edu

19 pointsDesian13 comments

It's amazing the lengths the medical industry will go to avoid simply giving patients their digital medical history on a flash drive. And here I thought requiring a faxed request, arbitrary waiting period, printing the records onto dead trees, scanning them back in, and burning a CD to mail made for a large moat!

"We can't trust you to keep vital information about your own body, so we'll literally just print it into your skin in a way you can't even read". Is it possible to be any more paternalistic?

The article mentions developing nations; this technology is being researched to provide a solution for vaccine records in places where it's only reliable option.

Issues with digitizing and/or making medical history easily accessible to patients is a completely separate issue.

Even in developing nations, I think the parent commenter’s point stands. Does living in a poor country mean it’s ok for information to be tattooed in your skin, in a format you can’t read or share, against your objections?

My lead in was half-facetious. Yes this isn't being marketed for all medical records, but it still demonstrates the widespread attitude of the medical industry asserting arbitrary control over your body while stripping your own agency.

But yes "developing nations" is a convenient excuse to dial the paternalism up to 11. Presumably the people there are still people, who can remember facts, retain paper records themselves (eg vaccine cards this article so quickly dismisses), and have identities for keeping local paper records and digital ones in the capital. If you still think tattoos would be a worthwhile addition, then every patient still needs to be given an individual choice, preferably with visible ink to maintain informed consent.

The tech sounds really cool. But cant help but feel its going to be a a privacy nightmare. Also, just like how fingerprints are a weak signature, imagine people trying to use this chip's signature as a means to sign for something.

I wonder how this would mesh with religions like Judaism that forbid tattoos. Seems that "Tattoos which are used in cancer treatment or any similar medical procedure to permanently mark the body for necessary life saving treatment"* are allowed, so maybe this counts?

* https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/tattooing-in-jewish...

As someone who values their privacy and anonymity I don't like this. I don't want records or identifiers embedded in my body, full stop.

> the medical record is stored and controlled by the patient within the patient’s skin

Can the patient remove or alter it? If not I don't feel like it's accurate to say they "control" it.

>the patches deliver a pattern in the skin that is invisible to the naked eye but can be scanned with a smartphone that has the infrared filter removed.

So any attacker can pull up your vaccination history (in theory your identity depending on what is imprinted in the dots) with a drive-by attack that requires nothing more sophisticated than a cellphone camera? That is exactly the opposite of how I want my medical records secured.

> I don't want records or identifiers embedded in my body, full stop.

I don't want medical records stored in a place I can't control.

I've already read here that whatever you disclose with a request to be off the records, goes IN the record with a note "the patient said that was to be off the record"

So I don't play along.

No identifiers in your body? Is there a pill to take to erase one's DNA?

Storing medical information below the skin’s surface Specialized dye, delivered along with a vaccine, could enable “on-patient” storage of vaccination history.

Does it require 5G? /s

This is step #1. But magine how much better it would be to inject a small microchip that stores info about multiple vaccines (step #2). Once there is a chip, why not store all medical records on it (4)? Hey, lets also use it as an ID (5)! Oh why carry around a wallet when the chip can be used for payments (6)? Now add a GPS reciever and a radio transmitter and we can see who where those terrorists are hiding now (7). I can go on, but you get the idea. Dystopian future is near.

I was told this was a conspiracy /s

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