Are the Terms and Conditions Offered by Cloud-Servers Safe for Personal Health Record-Keeping?

Presented at the 8th Health Informatics in Africa Conference (HELINA 2013). Peer-reviewed and selected under the responsibility of the Scientific Programme Committee.This exploratory paper investigates the terms and conditions offered by cloud service providers, questioning whether these are a safe environment for personal health record-keeping with regards to privacy, security and intellectual property control among other factors. We focus on evaluating the extent to which the privacy of sensitive information is protected in these systems as well as the extent to which terms provided comply with relevant regulations. Whilst many people may be excited about the introduction of cloud solutions to managing their personal health information, there are questions that we urge the public to ask before entrusting their sensitive health records to any cloud-service system