Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Data Portability and the Web Relational File System

Yowzaa! My brain is still spinning from reading two great posts. The first was Chris Messina talking about Data Portability in his FactoryCity Blog "Thoughts on Data Portability." In that post Chris points to a great post from Josh Patterson and Josh Lewis at Floe.tv on the Web Relational File System (WRFS).

If you have any interest in Data Portability and the future of data storage on the web then these two blogs are essential reading.

What strikes me is that much of the discussion on Data Portability focuses around social networking, our friends lists and similar "lightweight" information. When I read these posts I am thinking about how these same technologies can be applied to sectors such as Healthcare. This is what is driving me to run HealthCampMd in Owings Mills MD on Saturday June 14th. Privacy and Data Portability are critically important issues to be dealt with in the HealthCare industry. We as consumers will increasingly have a role in the management of our health and as such should want control over our health-related data in what is an incredibly decentralized industry.

How can we control access to our health records when they may be spread across our Doctor's office, the local hospitals, various labs and our local pharmacy? These are real issues and one where we have almost zero say in what happens with our data.

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