Sen. Mark Warner touts e-medical data despite recent hacker attack

The NewsVirginian reports that a hacker’s theft of millions of Virginia’s most sensitive prescription drug records isn’t slowing Sen. Mark Warner’s push for electronic medical records.
The former governor convened a conference in Richmond on Monday about the medical and cost-saving benefits of digitizing hundreds of millions of patient records nationally.

Just 2½ weeks earlier, a hacker broke into what the Virginia Department of Health Professions believed was a secure computer database for the Prescription Monitoring Program.
The hacker accessed millions of individual prescription records about such powerful and closely controlled drugs as Oxycodone, morphine, Vicodin and Valium. The intruder also left a taunting note on the DHP Web site demanding a $10 million ransom for the return of the data. State officials said the information was fully backed up and never lost. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said there will be no payments.