[PLUG] doxy.me, meet.jit.si, facebook, FaceTime, etc.

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Sat Jun 6 22:17:38 UTC 2020


"Standards" are wonderful, there are so many ... :-/

My physician wife is currently "seeing" patients using the
physician-specific web-app "doxy.me" using a headset and a
narrow-field camera on our dedicated linux "video computer".

"doxy.me" isn't perfect, but she pays them to get it right.
They are paid by tens of thousands of doctors, so they are
the deep pockets in the ambulance-chaser cross-hairs.

While I am certain we are not meeting every jot and tittle
of the vast corpus of medical legislation and HIPAA, that
is because there is so damned much legislation.  We were
helped a lot by a medical informatics intern and her OHSU
teachers, but even they don't know everything.

I focus proper use of software and hardware, she focuses
on the medical concerns of each patient.  If she is forced
to choose between a patient's well-being and following the
uninformed diktats of bureaucrats, she will make the right
choice.  It might cost us our savings, our house, and jail
time, but it won't cost patient lives, or our souls.

We have way too many computers; I try to segregate them by
function and vulnerability.  Of course these are behind a
separate firewall computer (which I am slowly upgrading,
with expert help). 

We use a single two-way-video-equipped desktop for doxy.me;
we could use it for web meetings like OMSI Science Pub and
Science On Tap, but - security first! - we'll forgo
interactivity and watch those events on youtube later, on
other less-secure computers.

After the facebook password fiasco, we deleted our facebook
accounts.  Facebook attracts way too much attention from
thousands of skilled cybercriminals, and seems impossible
to protect 100%.  We miss out on many family activities,
but we can't choose those AND professional responsibility.

I appreciate pluglist discussions about meet.jit.si. 
We may risk using jit.se with the secure video desktop to
connect to her iPhone-and-FaceTime-using father, and to
her other Android-using siblings, assuming we can convince
most of them to use the open-source meet.jit.si app. 

We were on Apple's and Microsoft's accelerated-obsolescence
treadmills for years; we aren't making that mistake again.

We don't use portable computers (laptops or handhelds) to
access our own financial or medical records; that is only
for a few specific machines secure inside the house. 
A restriction I impose that is a small strain on our
marriage; "no, you must not do that, because ...".  I try
to explain why to her with medical infection analogies.

Convenience and security are usually opposites.  So is
computer security expertise (which expands to fill entire
brains) and almost every other kind of expertise (ditto).
In the end, it will be computers and their programmers that
must adapt; physics and physiology aren't programmable.
Would you rather your doctor debug apps, or debug YOU?

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com



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