Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Technology and Plastic Surgery

2016; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 137; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1097/01.prs.0000475816.27789.ed

1529-4242

Antoine De Runz, Nicolas Bertheuil, David Boccara, Farid Bekara,

Social Media in Health Education

Sir: We read with great interest the article by Patel et al. entitled “Technology and Plastic Surgery: Potential Pitfalls for Patient Confidentiality and Proposed Solutions.”1 The authors are to be congratulated for their interest in patient confidentiality and the proposed solutions to secure protected health information. In our study of the use of photography conducted with 176 plastic surgeons,2 the surgeons often shared their photographs with others surgeons (71.1 percent) and sometimes shared them with other medical personnel (48.8 percent). A secure server was used for storage of the photographs by 63.5 percent of the surgeons. A personal computer was used by 62.8 percent of the surgeons, workplace computers were used by 65.6 percent of the surgeons, and external portable hard drive/Universal Serial Bus drives were used by 74.8 percent. The use or failure to use Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996–compliant applications seems not to be the real problem. The judicious strategies described by Patel et al. to secure patient health information are valid, but may be useless when storage devices are lost, stolen, or hacked. For example, deleted stored protected health information may be recovered, “protected” mobile devices may be stolen, and authentication-broken Wi-Fi networks may be intruded, leading to medicolegal consequences with the risk of breaches in patient confidentiality. We believe that plastic surgeons should pay particular attention to maintaining storage devices and avoiding the use of some devices such as mobile phones and nonsecured personal computers. Secure workplace servers seem to be the most appropriate storage devices for protected health information, and encrypted hard drives seem to be most appropriate for transfer. Of course, for the reasons explained by Patel et al., plastic surgeons should avoid social network technologies, such as iMessage, Google apps, or cloud services, for the storage of protected health information. Contrary to the conclusion of Patel et al.,1 we believe that the most current technologies may not absolutely safeguard protected health information and may expose the surgeon to breaches in patient confidentiality and to legal and ethical risks arising from insufficient knowledge of the law, carelessness, or recklessness. DISCLOSURE The authors have no financial interest to declare in relation to the content of this communication. No external funding was received. Antoine de Runz, M.D. Department of Maxillofacial, Plastic, Reconstructive and Cosmetic Surgery Nancy University Hospital EA 7299 ETHOS University of Lorraine Nancy, France Nicolas Bertheuil, M.D. Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Hopital Sud CHU Rennes Rennes, France David Boccara, M.D. Plastic, Reconstructive and Cosmetic and Burn Surgery Unit Hôpital Saint Louis CHU Saint-Louis Paris, France Farid Bekara, M.D. Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Lapeyronie Hospital CHU Montpellier Montpellier, France