Most people realize that free Internet platforms such as Google and Facebook gather vast amounts of personal data to target advertising and products. Fewer know that the health care system also scoops up our most intimate medical secrets to sell commercially to companies that have nothing to do with our treatment or billing.
Adam Tanner, an associate at Harvard's Institute for Quantitative Social Science, has written two investigative books on the worldwide flow of personal data, one of which is Our Bodies, Our Data: How Companies Make Billions Selling Our Medical Records. He examines how this lucrative international business extends to doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, and insurers—and even labs that test blood and conduct other deeply revealing tests.
All, he says, are parts of a vast, multi-billion-dollar market that seeks to keep its activities far from the public eye. While companies trafficking in medical data say the trade may lead to scientific breakthroughs, others fear massive privacy violations, especially as technology continues to make it easier to identify even anonymized information about individuals. Tanner offers insights into how we can best balance the promise big data offers to advance medicine and improve lives while preserving the rights and interests of every patient.
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