Medical blogs can pose threat to patient privacy

Although blogs written by medical professionals are growing in popularity, authors of these blogs may unknowingly reveal confidential patient information, according to a new study published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The study is the first to examine whether blogs written by medical professionals violate patient privacy or fail to meet professional standards for disclosure of conflicts of interest.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar Dr. Tara Lagu and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania examined content from 271 medical blogs and found that more than half (56.8 percent) contained enough information to reveal the author’s identity. The authors say that although overt violations of patient privacy are rare, “anonymous” medical bloggers who provide information about their location, subspecialty or other personal details inadvertently reveal their identity to patients, colleagues or other members of the public. In some cases, patients described in these blogs may be able to identify themselves. Three blogs had recognizable photographs of patients, with one including an extensive description of the patient and links to pictures.

Researchers also found that some blogs allowed advertisements and others promoted health care products within the blog text. None describing products within blog text adhered to medical ethics standards of providing information on conflicts of interest, or whether the blogger received payment for promotion of these products. A recent poll found that 29 percent of blog writers have been approached by a public relations professional to endorse a product, and of those, 52 percent had written a post endorsing the products on their blogs.

“While many medical blogs provide valuable information to the public, are respectful in tone and are written anonymously, others pose a threat to patient privacy and have the potential to threaten the integrity of the medical profession,” Lagu says. “Unfortunately, no professional organization has taken the initiative to provide guidance on this issue. As the number of medical blogs grows, professional organizations, medical educators, and the blogging community must address the challenge of this new medium by setting guidelines and standards for what is appropriate.”

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