Forget the medical-industry claims that your medical records are private, that you control them and that they won't be used without your knowledge, contends an expert in medical-privacy disputes.

Data mining of medical records is surging, she says, with at least three new efforts to use personal information for profit.

Twila Brase, the president of the Citizens' Council for Health Freedom, warns that the three programs she recently uncovered are just "a sampling of the many ways the government and the health care industry are attempting to use patient data – often without consent – for their own gain."

The first, documented by Becker's Hospital Review, reveals "researchers are attempting to predict a patient's risk for various hereditary conditions from their emergency contacts."

Officials at Columbia University, Mount Sinai Health System and New York-Presbyterian have used the names and telephone numbers patients submit as their emergency contacts to "identify 7.4 million familial relationships."

"Then, the researchers estimated a patient's likelihood of developing 500 hereditary conditions, such as Type 2 diabetes, obesity and celiac disease," Brase reported.

"The team reported that this next-of-kin information had previously 'gone unused in research' and 'these analyses provide a validation of the use of EHRs for genetics and disease research,'" she said.

In short, electronic health records of Americans are being used in medical research without their knowledge or consent.

Becker's quoted the study's authors saying the analyses "provide a validation of the use of EHRs for genetics and disease research."

Brase next alerted consumers to a "pathway to a National Patient ID" discussed in Heathcare IT News.

The report said a group of 33 various medical organizations are urging lawmakers to make patient matching a priority.

"This call for 'patient safety' is a pathway to the National Patient ID and the end of privacy. A 'national patient matching strategy' is essentially the same as a National Patient ID," she said.

IT News reported the groups want Congress to write their plan into the 2019 appropriations bills.

"For nearly two decades, innovation and industry progress has been stifled due to a narrow interpretation of the language included in Labor-HHS bills since FY1999, prohibiting the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from adopting or implementing a unique patient identifier," they explain.

The groups are complaining of "the continuing lack of a national patient identifier system."

The third effort is a plan to analyze the medical details of 24 million veterans, Brase said.

"Health Data Management reports that the Department of Energy is planning to use high-performance computing and artificial intelligence to analyze the EHRs and other data of more than 24 million veterans. The government claims this research is to improve vets' health care by developing new treatments and preventive strategies for issues such as suicide prevention, prostate cancer and cardiovascular disease," she reported.

But she said the veterans' privacy is being compromised in the process.

The Health Management report quoted Dimitri Kusnezov of the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration saying, "The VA has a unique dataset of medical records, whole genomes and imaging data that is one of the most comprehensive in dimensions of time, scale and breadth, and – in many aspects – this dataset is considered to be the largest and most comprehensive in the world."