Here is yet another example of the constant violations of our privacy rights we now endure in online settings.

I’m scheduling a medical appointment online right now. There’s no mention of patient confidentiality or HIPAA on the scheduling site–but in order to submit the appointment request, I must check a box stating I agree to the Online Scheduling Terms of Use. Clicking the link to see what I must agree too, I read a long EULA-like form. It includes the following language:

You acknowledge and agree that your Submissions are non-confidential and do not contain proprietary information. InQuicker will not be required to treat your Submissions as confidential, and you acknowledge and agree InQuicker may, in connection with its business, use any of the concepts and ideas contained in your Submissions (including without limitation, product or advertising ideas) without compensation to you, and InQuicker will not incur any liability to you as a result of any similarities between concepts and ideas contained in your Submissions and future InQuicker operations and business.

You acknowledge and agree that by posting Submissions to the site, you grant InQuicker a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, irrevocable, transferable, and fully sublicensable right, license and permission to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, distribute, publish, create derivative works from and publicly display and perform the Submissions and any Content contained therein throughout the world in any media now known or hereafter created without attribution for the sole purpose of advertising, promoting, marketing or other exploitation or sale of the InQuicker business or services.

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This is standard sort of language for social media, apps and content-hosting platforms, in which the company is basically saying, “You don’t own your posts or content, we do.” It’s exploitative in the usual setting. It’s nonsensical and violative in this context of trying to book a doctor’s appointment, and having to describe one’s symptoms in order to do so. I am forced to agree that InQuicker can keep my medical description forever and publish it, sell it or use it in advertising whenever it likes. That is totally inappropriate, but I can’t schedule the appointment if I don’t agree.

Yet it seems that nobody has stopped InQuicker, a medical appointment scheduling platform, from including this language. It’s hard to see how to even do that. The patient website employing InQuicker has no link or information about how to note issues or concerns with the platform. And the InQuicker corporate website states that patients should speak directly with their providers. It only provides a contact form for prospective business partners seeking to purchase a license to use the InQuicker platform.

We all encounter these situations all the time. It’s maddening. And it’s difficult for the practice of medicine to adhere to medical ethics when it is intertwined with business and IT systems which do not.