Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Mar 12, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Mar 12, 2019 - May 7, 2019
Date Accepted: Aug 10, 2020
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
The epidemiology of email addresses:. aA case-control study of patients emails in a French University hospital
ABSTRACT
Background:
Healthcare professionals are caught between the wish of patients to speed up health-related communication via emails and the need of protecting health information. The inconsistency between these two aspects is a part of the privacy paradox.
Objective:
The aim is to analyze the privacy breach risks associated with the use of emails of patients.
Methods:
Between 2000 and November of 2018, 971,822 patients of the European Hospital Georges Pompidou (HEGP) were included in the clinical information system.
Results:
The HEGP has collected 41,004 patient email addresses (4.2% of the total population of patients), from which 37,779 associated with known email providers, 31,005 email addresses associated with Google, Microsoft, Orange and Yahoo, 2,878 to professional emails addresses and 347 email addresses to personalized domain names.
Conclusions:
Patients’ emails expose them to a privacy breach. We recommend a very restrictive use of the emails for health communication.
Citation
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Copyright
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