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Comment by Fogest | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious what personal health information would be transmitted via a pager anyway? I assume a doctor would only need to know a room number and maybe code or chief complaint in the page?

I see other commenters mentioning some PHI is being shared via pagers and I am unclear what that may be ?

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In my experience (UK) there is no personal information transmitted. There are two main types of bleeps:

1. Sending the number of a telephone extension you want the recipient of the bleep to call. For example, if I need a cardiology opinion, I will bleep the cardiologist with a telephone extension and wait for them to (hopefully) call back while I am still but he phone and before it is called by anyone else. This data is not sensitive. These are the types of bleeps which are being replaced slowly by asynchronous communication via apps

2. Emergency bleeps which are designed to alert a specific group of people on the arrest team to respond to an emergency. These usually work quite differently. Instead of 1:1 they are 1:many and usually carry a different alert tone, followed by a (generally poor quality) audio alert of the operator saying something like "paediatric cardiac arrest inbound to ED, ETA, 5 minutes". Again these carry no sensitive data.

Yeah from what I have heard from Canadian based doctors the pagers are used for almost identically the same as what you described for the UK.

Pagers get used for PII, and if somebody thinks it doesn't happen, they're simply confident that their experience is representative. It happens, and quite frequently, in Canada.

https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/id/security/news/vulnerabil...

Yeah what you linked me to talks about I believe the same case another user already linked to. It was more correct for me to say I was speaking more about the Ontario, Canada healthcare system as that is the one I work within. The healthcare systems are mostly run at the provincial level so it can be hard to talk about the countries healthcare as a whole as it can often vary province to province.

I’ve listened to pages in large Canadian cities in the past for fun. Pages at the local hospital often included patient names and diagnosis or analysis results.

Yeah from what it sounds like there were some incidents in the news in BC in 2019 and it sounds like a lot of hospitals may have adopted new procedures since then? Not sure if you've been listening to any recent ones?

It's kinda hard also to figure out which areas may be doing it and which aren't as the different provinces are kinda run independently.

Yes that was before 2019 so maybe it has changed now.

here's an article with examples: https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/health-care/article...

basically, they broadcast patient name, initial diagnosis etc

Weird, as the other commenter mentioned their's in the UK don't have patient information in them. In fact the medical professional I know in Canada have pagers that give essentially the same information about the UK commenters. It's either an extension to call, or for a code.

Maybe countries like the UK and Canada are more strict about personal health information and have kept personal info out of pagers? I know working in healthcare systems in Canada I would get in trouble even if I used a medical software to look myself up in it.

Here's a Canada example (apparently patient transport coordination, fixed after media attention): https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/pager-systems-used-in-healthca...

Ah, interesting. The only people I've actually talked to before about the pagers were from Ontario and the healthcare is mostly managed at the provincial level. So not sure if this was a problem in Ontario or not. I am sure at some point all the hospitals were doing this and eventually switched over to the new way that doesn't do this.

However being a 911 dispatcher for the EMS system here I can say that our radios are not encrypted and can be listened to online by anyone. We mention addresses, chief complaints, and anything else that may be relevant for the paramedics. Patient names would not be given over radios nor would other private info like if the building has an access code. Anything that is private like that is indicated to the paramedics by saying something like "call for access code". Then they call the landline and get the info that way.

In my opinion though, knowing addresses and medical conditions going on can still be a bit sensitive in nature. The police here recently switched to encrypted radios. It was nice sometimes to listen to the scanner, but at the same time it's understandable why it's less than ideal having open radios.

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