GP surgery using a standard Gmail account

GPs have a system called Healthmail that they use to send secure emails with private data and results to other healthcare professionals.

Normally gmail type emails are normally used to request callbacks etc.

But a yahoo address would not imply any level of security! Gmail is probably better.

You could have a doc with their own domain and that might look professional and make you think it is more secure, but their email could be set up on some mickey mouse mail server run by their hosting or IT service provider. That could be waaaay worse than a Gmail account. 🤨

This above, you could be emailing somebody@anydomain.ie and still be emailing a gmail account.

My GP makes zero use of email for anything. They will print out stuff on a page, but do not send it electronically, nor do they bother copying emails for things like seeking appointments with specialist facilities to me.

There is a security issue, but there is also a need for the general sharing of information with patients and a secure way of doing that.

My point was that they do not email me, not that they do not use healthmail. But even in the case of prescriptions it would be reasonable to generate a standard document to inform the patient that a prescription had been sent to the pharmacist and copy that to the patient. Then the patient would have a clear record of the dates of the prescription etc.

There would be some medical information in that kind of correspondence with patients, including repeat prescription requests.

Google also know more about how to harvest and exploit information available to them to maximise their advertising income. Do you want to be targeted for adverts based on medical information in your emails?

It's your own choice of course, but I wouldn't trust them (Google) as far as I can throw them. This case is from the US, but is being driven by an Irishman, Johnny Ryan.
https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/irish-council-for-civil-liberties-lodges-national-security-complaint-against-google-in-us/a1985260657.html

You make a fair point as to whether an 'average' email service hosted by an average web hosting company is more secure. I wonder are there specialist providers to GPs and other medical providers perhaps?

Healthmail, it's an Office 365 tenant with, presumably, extremely strict transport rules on what traffic can go in or out.

It's managed by the HSE.