By David Do, MD

Earlier this month officials at Oregon Health Sciences University discovered that residents in several departments were storing patient information on Google Drive, and had been doing so for the past two years. Given They treated this discovery as a breach of privacy and notified 3000 patients about the incident.

While I don’t condone the storage of patient information on unapproved services like Gmail or Google Drive, this incident pretty much highlights the sorry state of information systems within the hospital and the unfulfilled need by physicians for tools that facilitate workflow and patient care.

It says something that the Oregon residents felt compelled to take such a drastic action. I don’t know what punishment – if any – those responsible were given by administrators for their “crimes.” I’ll leave it to readers to make up their own minds about the wisdom of the unauthorized workaround and the appropriateness of any punishment. But I do know that the message the incident sends is a very clear one.

We’re screwing this up. There is really no earthly reason why it should be any more difficult to share a patient record than it is to share a Word doc, a Powerpoint or yes, even a cloud-based Google Drive spreadsheet.

Why the Breach Happened

What’s going on here? Let’s say I admit a patient to the hospital.  Our…