Data
for
sale

January 20, 2017 -- Our medical data is valuable and is bought and sold without our permission or even our knowledge. Many people are worried.

About this, Adam Tanner has written Our Bodies, Our Data.

He says (in an interview with Reveal) that people would be "creeped out" if they knew.

My own feelings on the topic are mixed.

It is true that certain types of medical information -- substance abuse history, sexual history, psych history, HIV status -- are very private and should indeed be protected. Other kinds of information, e.g. info that might influence an insurance carrier's decision, should also be protected, at least from that kind of user. However, some data mining, e.g. population health and epidemiological studies, are beneficial and should be permitted.

Most of my own medical data I don't care who sees. You want to look at an x-ray of my broken arm? Go for it. You want to know when I had a flu shot? Knock yourself out. We are excessively protective of much of this data, and it creates obstacles to care that are unnecessary. With a little education, the knee-jerk instinct to hide it unconditionally could be relaxed.

On the other hand, I do think that the uses of this data should be more transparent. Some of the uses, e.g. marketing data for drug manufacturers and retailers, should be tightly regulated and consumers should be able to find out about it if they want to.

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