Amazon’s recent acquisition of online pharmacy startup PillPack has raised privacy concerns for some on how the company will safeguard and use people’s personal health information, The Wall Street Journal reports. The acquisition will lead Amazon into the highly regulated realm of health information, and while the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act protects patient data from being sold to another party or used to support targeted advertising, it also allows companies to share patient information for marketing purposes if a patient provides consent. Ryan Stark, a senior privacy attorney with law firm Page, Wolfberg & Wirth, said, “Nobody reads the notice of privacy practices.” Stark added that Amazon will likely need to wall off the startup to help avoid having the entire business comply with the federal standards for patient privacy. (Registration may be required to access this story.)
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