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Show HN: Kate's App

katesapp.org

61–70 of 192 posts

Re: Show HN: Kate's App

#61

contra view to these comments: keep going. I worked in health information privacy and security longer than all of them and the number of sincere people in it is diminishingly small. the field has become infested with gatekeeper nerds and petty bureaucrats who insist you pay their toll to proceed, or demoralized and cynical opportunists who just go along to get along. sure, there are risks, but take them. make a thing…

> fuck the system

This app is the system, with a "trust me bro" approach to privacy and security.

Its creator is probably well intentioned, but this is likely to result in bad things for its users.

Re: Show HN: Kate's App

#62
post #37
post #16

I don't want to repeat other comments here; but this app smells of a very dangerous attitude: Built with love by novices with grand intentions, with complete blindness to the real consequences that happen when novices are ignorant in their field. If your goal is to "find a learning project," I suggest finding a very different "learning project." Otherwise, keep "Kate's app" private, word-of-mouth, invite-only for und…

How do you know that the authors are novices with "complete blindness" to real consequences? Where are you getting the "find a learning project" goal from? It sucks that you've been burnt by that before, but it sounds like your employer was the one who screwed you there, not the author of the application.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Kate's App

#63

Thank you everybody for your comments. Comments on legal issues: I absolutely agree and 100% plan to get legal advice. In the meantime, if you have personal experience, I would love to learn from you. Comments on HIPAA: I'm 99% sure this does not apply, since the site is for patients and their families, and no doctors, clinics, hospitals, or insurance companies are involved. All information comes from the family, and…

> Comments on security: This is a huge issue for me. I've followed best practices as nearly as I can, but I've also been asking around to find out who could do a comprehensive security audit, but haven't yet found anybody I trust. Does anybody have any recommendations on how to find someone?

The best first step is to conduct a review yourself; you may want to hire or recruit a volunteer to do a security review, but you can kick it off yourself by using free, open source tools to scan your application, your code, and your environment.

Your first stop should be https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/observatory because there are some simple, prescriptive improvements you can make.

Your second stop should be using a container or cloud security scanning tool to check for vulnerable configurations and packages. There are a myriad of tools available, like Trivy for container scanning, Prowler https://github.com/prowler-cloud/prowler or ScoutSuite https://github.com/nccgroup/ScoutSuite for scanning your cloud environments, etc

Your third stop should be https://www.zaproxy.org/, which is a free download you can use, and https://www.zaproxy.org/getting-started/ is a great way to get started. This will help you quickly identify low hanging fruit that can be found through automated scanning.

Your fourth stop should be running language appropriate static analysis tools against your application. There are too many to mention, but here is a good starting list: https://owasp.org/www-community/Source_Code_Analysis_Tools

All of these will give you quick, tactical things you can address. Once you get through any critical findings (which frequently, but not always means they are directly exploitable without additional effort) you should threat model your application, and build a plan for security - https://owasp.org/www-community/Threat_Modeling

Re: Show HN: Kate's App

#64

Thank you everybody for your comments. Comments on legal issues: I absolutely agree and 100% plan to get legal advice. In the meantime, if you have personal experience, I would love to learn from you. Comments on HIPAA: I'm 99% sure this does not apply, since the site is for patients and their families, and no doctors, clinics, hospitals, or insurance companies are involved. All information comes from the family, and…

Hey mate, it just so happens that I’m working on a very similar thing. Maybe I could help you out regarding security and local-first stuff? Drop me an email if you’re interested. Cheers.

EDIT: In any case, you could take a look at https://github.com/YousefED/Matrix-CRDT. Matrix takes care of e2ee. CRDTs give you local-first super powers.

Re: Show HN: Kate's App

#65
post #21
post #3

If you're dealing with personal health information (PHI), I would advise you to temporarily close your site and hire a lawyer straight away. Whenever you touch this kind of data, regulatory regimes like HIPAA may apply, and you need to be extremely careful. There's not a HIPAA compliance or even a privacy policy statement available on your front page. See https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/laws-reg..…

> Whenever you touch this kind of data, regulatory regimes like HIPAA apply, My understanding is you're an actual attorney, yes? Can you shed any light on this area...? My understanding is HIPAA and similar laws aren't applied as a result of a user disclosing their own information for their own purposes. For example, you can freely put your own personal medical information into Google Docs, Apple Notes, Facebook post…

I like boldcontacts. It wouldn't have been useful for my daughter, but it would have been useful for my grandmother.

Re: Show HN: Kate's App

#66

Some feedback: * More screenshots/use cases. * Information about who you are/why it's called Kate's App. I think that especially for single/small dev teams, this can really help build trust and interest. * Said elsewhere, but a publicly available privacy policy. Also not seeing any after signing up. Big red flag. * IMO, don't have usernames AND emails at sign up. Choose one. * Needs padding on either side. Other form…

Thank you. They're all in my kanban now.

Re: Show HN: Kate's App

#67
post #3

If you're dealing with personal health information (PHI), I would advise you to temporarily close your site and hire a lawyer straight away. Whenever you touch this kind of data, regulatory regimes like HIPAA may apply, and you need to be extremely careful. There's not a HIPAA compliance or even a privacy policy statement available on your front page. See https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/laws-reg..…

I would appreciate a recommendation. I'm in Minnesota.

Re: Show HN: Kate's App

#68
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> app developer having a change of heart Yes. Two features high on my list of todos: 1) download all your data; 2) delete all data from the site. The second is a bit more complicated, since multiple family members may have access to the same data, and may have different opinions on deleting it. I'll work it out. Otherwise, you have only my integrity. I'm not looking to sell it, but I would love to hand this over to s…

> The second is a bit more complicated, since multiple family members may have access to the same data, and may have different opinions on deleting it. I'll work it out. I know it's been said elsewhere, but you need a lawyer. This isn't something for you to work out, it's something for you to clearly understand your legal obligations, and what your exposure is based on which jurisdictions a user might log in from.

> you need a lawyer

Legal advice is part of working it out.

Re: Show HN: Kate's App

#69
post #39
post #33

Privacy concerns aside, I don't really understand what the point of this is, to be honest. You can already add family/caregivers as authorized users on a MyChart (Epic) profile, which is an actual source of truth, not a separate data store that you need to update manually. This seems like a good experiment in building a CRUD app, but I'd recommend doing that with something with less liability.

> I don't really understand what the point of this is, to be honest [...] on a MyChart (Epic) profile As someone who never heard of either MyChart nor Epic, I'm guessing it could be useful for people like me who don't have those things.

I could understand epic since I think that's mainly for doctors but don't most hospital systems use MyChart or similar portals nowadays to let patients access access their appointments/payment/lab results/doctor notes/etc

Re: Show HN: Kate's App

#70
post #69
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't really understand what the point of this is, to be honest [...] on a MyChart (Epic) profile As someone who never heard of either MyChart nor Epic, I'm guessing it could be useful for people like me who don't have those things.

I could understand epic since I think that's mainly for doctors but don't most hospital systems use MyChart or similar portals nowadays to let patients access access their appointments/payment/lab results/doctor notes/etc

MyChart is Epic’s patient frontend.
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