Slovakia Today, English Language Current Affairs Programme from Slovak Radio

In mid-September it was discovered by private IT security firm Nethemba that a medical database of everyone in Slovakia who had been tested for the Covid-19 virus – a database maintained by the state agency NCZI under the purview of the Health Ministry – had been accidently published on the internet with no data security to protect it, leaving the sensitive personal and medical information of nearly 400,000 patients defenceless against any hacker who knew about the data and wished to access it. Jonathan McCormick speaks with Pavol Luptak – CEO of Nethemba and a well-known IT security expert in Bratislava – about the dangers of such a massive data leak, and what should have been done to prevent it. --- Repeat: How do we know that the various medicines we take are really good for us - that they are reliable and safe? Mišo Staňak, a researcher and bio-ethicist in the field of health technology, takes us through the concept of "evidence-based medicine", a broad approach to quality-control in healthcare.