Privacy

Patient Privacy

Current (client-side Java version)

Typically SimulConsult does not receive the details of a patient's illness because the diagnostic tool runs on the computer that the clinician is using, not on SimulConsult's computers.  Although clinicians may choose to save individual cases on their own computers, no identifying information is associated with the information by SimulConsult and the patient information is not sent to SimulConsult.

If the clinician uses the "Save patient summary" feature to display a Web page for the purposes of documentation, there is no identifying information about the patient or doctor when the information for the page is sent to SimulConsult, and the patient summary information is deleted as soon the page is displayed.

New version as of 2018

The patient findings are sent to the server, but not retained.  The next interaction with the server overwrites the original information.  No patient identifiers are received or retained.

Electronic Health Record integrated version

If the clinician or employer has specified that the hospital computers will receive information about patient findings entered into the SimulConsult diagnostic tool, such information will be sent in accordance with the terms of that agreement.

Privacy for medical professionals

SimulConsult records information about medical professionals in the registration process.  This information is used to assess whether the individual is indeed a medical professional.

No contact information is disclosed except in cases in which a medical professional contributes or edits information to the database.  The information in the database is then referenced to the contributor or editor and available only to to other contributors and editors in other to make decisions about replacing previous information.  The contact information is not released to third parties.

Email addresses of registered users may be used several times a year to send out notices about important changes in the software.

Privacy of genome information

The SimulConsult genome-phenome analyzer, like the regular diagnostic decision support, runs on the local computer as a Java applet.  Any information read from a genome variant table remains on the local computer.  For example, any population frequencies or homoshares or heteroshares information is used locally and never reaches SimulConsult.