There are downsides to this too though. I wanted a second opinion on an EEG, and after some hassle getting the original office to mail a disk (the only way they

There are downsides to this too though. I wanted a second opinion on an EEG, and after some hassle getting the original office to mail a disk (the only way they can transfer it), the new doctor said they can't view it because they use different software at their hospital for EEGs. These are two well ranked US hospitals, and EEG is a fairly common procedure. Perhaps this is not an inherent downside to the data security, but it's a reality with the current medical system and regulation does play a part in how we got here. And there is no financial incentive for hospitals to fix these sort of issues, in fact there is a disincentive (I'm doing another EEG now...). So I just don't see how it gets fixed without some outside disruption. It may not be a popular opinion on HN but I'm much more concerned with having access to my own medical information than how secure it is.