Green Days' Website

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) regulates health information and ensures your private health information does not end up in the hands of people you don’t wish to have it.

As a web developer, you need to be aware of the line between allowing patients to share information by way of support groups or testimonial and having private information displaying on the Internet.   Let’s use a fictitious Greener Day Vasectomy Clinic as an example.  After having a procedure performed, doctors at Greener Day ask their patients to check-in on a yearly basis to ensure there have been no slip-ups with the procedure.  At the bottom of the form, patients are given the option to share their message with other patients.  This is a great opportunity for patients to give each other support like, “You go tiger!”, but it also opens them to a disaster waiting to happen with private information only meant for the doctor, “I slept with 14 women in the past year and not one got pregnant! t14@happygolfer.com”, to end up in the public domain.

Dangerous territory

Tips for playing it safe:

1) Do not include items for testimonials or sharing type information on any page where a patient will be submitting information to the doctor.  These pages need to be secure and transmitted to the doctor in an encrypted manner. Either separate the pages or if patients select “yes”, meaning they wish to share information, take them to a second page, restating the information shared on that page will be public. This will prevent information a patient never wanted to share from becoming public due to hurrying through a form or forgetting to click “No”.

2) If clients are sharing testimonials, do not display their e-mail address or other contact information in the page.  While they may have agreed to say good things about your company, they probably did not agree to have their e-mail out there for every spam bot in the universe to pick up.

3) When collecting patient information, do not automatically generate a “hidden” web page for each submission.  There might not be any direct links off the website going to it, but search engines and any cracker trying to dig around the site can still find the information.

4) Avoid short cuts if they threaten privacy.  Having everything in one form might be convenient for the web developer, but if it opens any chance for private information to accidentally become public, scratch it and rethink it.

5) Do not rely on robots.txt to keep information private.

6) If you really want something to be kept private, do not store the information on any computer that is connected to the Internet.

Never clean your refrigerator again!

A recent tweet sent me off into dreamland.

@eqhmcow: “Remain calm. I’m coming to your house to parse XML with regex. http://bit.ly/3×9sQX (via @marcusramberg)”

Being a bit dyslexic I swapped a few of those words around in my initial translation and began to imagine – what if you could organize your entire house with XML and have several cron jobs parse it on a weekly, daily, hourly basis to maintain organization and get rid of dirt and clutter!

It would look something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding='UTF-8'?>
   <house>
      <kitchen>
         <cabinets>
            <left-top-cabinet>
               <drinkware>
                  <glass-clean>Blue Goblet Tall</glass-clean>
                  <glass-clean>Blue Goblet Short</glass-clean>
                  <glass-clean>Wine Glass</glass-clean>
                  <mug-clean>Coffee Mug</mug-clean>
                  <mug-clean>Beer Mug</mug-clean>
               </drinkware>
            </left-top-cabinet>
            <right-top-cabinet>
               <dishware>
                  <plate-clean>Dinner Plate</plate-clean>
                  <plate-clean>Salad Plate</plate-clean>
               </dishware>
               <bakeware>
                  <pyrex-clean>Two Quart Casserole</pyrex-clean>
                  <pyrex-clean>Four Quart Casserole</pyrex-clean>
                  <pan-clean>Cookie Sheet</pan-clean>
               </bakeware>
            </right-top-cabinet>
            <left-bottom-cabinet>>
               <cat-area>
                  <cat-groomed>Amanda Sue</cat-groomed>
                  <cat-blanket-clean>Pink Cat Blanket</cat-blanket-clean>
               </cat-area>
            </left-bottom-cabinet>
         </cabinets>
         <refrigerator>
            <top-shelf>
               <bread>Sandwich Bread</bread>
               <bread>Pita</bread>
               <bread>Potato Hot Dog Rolls</bread>
            </top-shelf>
            <middle-shelf>
               <beverage-chilled>Milk</beverage-chilled>
               <beverage-chilled>Orange Juice</beverage-chilled>
            </middle-shelf>
            <crisper-drawer-right>
               <fruit>Apple</fruit>
               <fruit>Oranges</fruit>
               <fruit>Pears</fruit>
            </crisper-drawer-right>
            <crisper-drawer-left>
               <vegetable>Lettuce</vegetable>
               <vegetable>Eggplant</vegetable>
            </crisper-drawer-left>
            <door-shelf>
               <condiment>Mustard</condiment>
               <condiment>Ketchup</condiment>
               <condiment>Horshradish</condiment>
               <wine-chilled>Chaddsford Riesling 2005</wine-chilled>
               <beer-chilled>Duck Rabbit Amber Ale</beer-chilled>
               <beer-chilled>Lindemans Lambic Framboise Belgium</beer-chilled>
               <beer-chilled>Guinness</beer-chilled>
               <beer-chilled>Shiner Bock</beer-chilled>
            </door-shelf>
         </refrigerator>
         <dishwasher>
            <glass-dirty>Blue-Goblet-Tall</glass-dirty>
            <glass-dirty>Blue-Goblet-Short</glass-dirty>
            <glass-dirty>Wine-Glass</glass-dirty>
            <mug-dirty>Coffee-Mug</mug-dirty>
            <mug-dirty>Beer-Mug</mug-dirty>
            <plate-dirty>Dinner-Plate-Clean</plate-dirty>
            <plate-dirty>Salad-Plate-Clean</plate-dirty>
         </dishwasher>
         <pantry>
            <baking-supplies>Flour</baking-supplies>
            <baking-supplies>Sugar</baking-supplies>
            <canned-goods>Peas</canned-goods>
         </pantry>
      </kitchen>
      <kids-bedroom>
         <bed>
            <sheets-clean>Blue Cotton</sheets-clean>
            <comforter>Pac Man Comforter</comforter>
         </bed>
         <closet>
            <kid-pants-clean>Blue Jeans</kid-pants-clean>
            <kid-shirts-clean>Transformer Shirt</kid-shirts-clean>
         </closet>
         <toy-chest>
            <toy>GI Joe</toy>
            <toy>Legos</toy>
            <toy>Lincoln Logs</toy>
         </toy-chest>
      </kids-bedroom>
      <office>
         <desk>
            <computer>Macbook Pro</computer>
            <printer>
               <paper>Plain White Paper</paper>
               <ink>Canon Black</ink>
            </printer>
         </desk>
         <bookshelf-one>
            <book>Agile Web Development with Rails</book>
            <book>Hanbook of Usability Testing</book>
            <book>JavaScript Bible</book>
            <book>Don't Make Me Think</book>
            <book>Linux + Fundamentals and Certification</book>
         </bookshelf-one>
         <bookshelf-two>
            <book>Principles of Biochemistry</book>
            <book>Molecular Biology</book>
            <book>Predictably Irrational</book>
            <book>Beautiful Joe</book>
            <book>Still Life With Woodpecker</book>
         </bookshelf-two>
      </office>
      <living-room>
         <sofa>
            <cat>Jasper</cat>
            <cat>Wallace</cat>
         </sofa>
         <end-table-left>
            <lamp>Lamp With Black Shade</lamp>
         </end-table-left>
         <end-table-right>
            <lamp>Lamp With Black Shade</lamp>
         </end-table-right>
         <dog-bed>Chas</dog-bed>
      </living-room>
      <full-bath>
         <sink>
            <sink-top>
               <toothbrush>Blue Toothbrush</toothbrush>
               <toothbrush>Green Toothbrush</toothbrush>
               <toothbrush>Electric Toothbrush</toothbrush>
               <tissues>Puffs</tissues>
               <soap>Liquid Handsoap</soap>
            </sink-top>
         </sink>
            <toilet-paper-holder>
               <toilet-paper>Scotts Extra Soft Toilet Paper</toilet-paper>
            </toilet-paper-holder>
            <tub>
               <soap>Leaver 2000</soap>
               <shampoo>Redken Fresh Curl</shampoo>
               <conditioner>Mark Anthony Curl</conditioner>
             </tub>
      </full-bath>
   </house>

Next, you’ll need a simple process to automatically put everything in the proper place. e.g the dirty dishes where they need to be, the clean dishes where they need to be. You’ll want positive and negative controls on various items.  For example, you’ll want a process to monitor the refrigerator door-shelf in case it runs out of beer.  When the process sees you are not maintining the minimum number of 3 <beer-chilled>, it will restock <refrigerator><door-self> with <beer-chilled> for you.

<refrigerator>
   <door-shelf>
      <condiment>Mustard</condiment>
      <wine-chilled>Chaddsford Riesling 2005</wine-chilled>
      <beer-chilled>Duck Rabbit Amber Ale</beer-chilled>
   </door-shelf>
</refrigerator>

You might even wish to define some of the tags within your process to say, keep your <beer-chilled> at 40 degrees ferinheight. Perhaps the process could even compile a list of everything you need and do your grocery shopping for you.

You’ll also want a process that monitors for undefined DTD items like dust and dirt, so they can be eliminated from the house.  You’ll probably want to have a saftey on this device in case your new

<office>
   <desk>
      <laptop>MacBook Pro</laptop>
   </desk>
</office>

did not get entered into the DTD before the process ran, because you were too excited to use the new computer when you got home and forgot to add it to the list.

If you’ve gotten this far in the post, I believe you have enough good whits about you to have the general idea of how this would work.  How would you make this XML organized house more efficient? What type of processes would you write? Can someone please make this physically possible!?