Healthcare Technology and Big Data

Healthc atomic number 18 Technology and prodigious Data mental homeAs technology advances, wellness check devices are adequate to record increase amounts of learning. These devices are as well becoming much to a greater extent assessable to consumers than in the past. In Adam Tanners article Health entrepreneur Debates Going To Datas Dark Side, he discusses the comp any refuge Heart. inviolable Heart is contracting medical checkup examination exam devices for consumer purpose. These devices are able to measuring rod values the the deals of blood oxygen saturation, heart rate, and perfusion index. Being able to collect these massive amounts of entropy, places these devices in the realm of colossal entropy. Although the topic of turgid selective information imposes its proclaim issues, the medical nature of the entropy creates an additional association of important issues.Safe Heart is not the first organization to develop devices that collect orotund quantitie s of selective information. In recent years, some(prenominal) a(prenominal) organizations have begun to transport and use bad quantities of medical info. Hospitals, credit agencies and researchers have all started to use medical information to the advantage of either the patient or their own corporation. With all the data being captured, there are legal and honest issues that become apparent.Main IssuesThe most prominent issue related to mammoth wellnesscare technology data is a legal one. The Health restitution Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), protects health data that is transmitted by a certain groups and organizations 1. It states that consent essential be obtained from the patient to distri providede any information to a third party. The organizations include are health plans, health care clearinghouses, and some health care providers 1. This would mean that non-health organizations transmitting health information would not be subject to HIPAA. The previo usly mentioned organization Safe Heart, would not be subject to HIPAA because they are not an organization cover by the act. Safe Heart would be able to transmit data in a variety of ways and not be hold by the restrictions of HIPAA. An another(prenominal) act that has the power to dictate patient data, but is not optimized for current technologies, is the Privacy Act 1. The Privacy Act protects data that is distributed by the federal government. To distribute data, the government must remove personally identifying information from the records 1. After the information is removed, this allows the government to distribute massive amounts of noncombatant health data publically. As long as explicitly identifying attributes like name and address have been removed, the Privacy Act does not go under how much, or where the data put forward be distributed. There are someer bounds on what the government lavatory do, making this a wardrobe legal issue. bad data also imposes several e thical issues on healthcare technology. fifty-fifty though health agencies may anonymize data in accordance with the Privacy Act, it is still possible to associate the data tooshie to the individual. The Massachusetts Group Insurance Commission relaxd a dataset in the 1990s, and they certified the public that the data had been finishly anonymized. A graduate student at the time combined this dataset with voting data and was able to associate medical data back to the correct patient. Shortly after this, it was shown that an American can be identified with only their zip code, birthdate and sex 2. This imposes a uncounted of issues on medical technology companies like Safe Heart. If a released dataset is not properly anonymized, the large amounts of data collected by the devices can be associated back to the patients. This also has powerful ethical implications when considering the results of a study do by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. This organization studied a collectio n of alert health and fitness applications for both iOS and Android operating systems. The study name that many of the applications transmitted data, without user notification, to third parties. The data transmitted included items like latitude, longitude, and zip code data 3. Since many of the developers were not medical entities, the data sharing is not limited. The medical data can be used for marketing of products and can be sold to third parties for other uses. This is a large impingement of user privacy and creates one more way to link consumers to their already existing medical data that has been anonymized.major(ip) StakeholdersThe winners here are largely marketing and advertising agencies. After buy a, or using a publically available, dataset marketers can use the few remaining pieces of identifying information like location, age and gender to target particular consumers. With improved consumer targeting, marketing and advertising agencies can increase their revenue a nd moreover their own product line. The consumers are also winners depending on how their data is handled. If the data is handled correctly, the profits from the distribution of the data would allow companies, like SafeHeart, to subsidize the comprise of the medical devices 4. Subsidized devices would allow medical technological companies to reach a broader demographic, providing increased public benefit. The data gathered by the consumer medical devices can also be used to enhance medical research providing additional benefit to the consumers 5. Finally, the collection of data can benefit consumers because it enables improved trailing of diseases among an entire population 6. If diseases can be detected faster, a large portion of the public would benefit.Although consumers can reap a large numeral of benefits from outstanding data in healthcare, they are losers as well. There volition be many consumers who do not want their data to be affiliated with marketing or advertising a gencies. To these consumers, this is viewed as an extreme invasion of privacy. In addition to the undesired sharing, these users may be subject to the re-identification process. Even though the shared medical data contains few identifying attributes, the remaining information can be used to associate the original consumer with the appropriate medical record 2. This too in an invasion of the consumers privacy, contrary to many of their desires. After consumers, some medical technology entities are also losers. For companies like Safe Heart, the profit from released datasets would reduce costs to the consumer. As a medical company, improving the publics health is one of their primary missions. The capableness that consumers may be re-identified, or targeted by marketing, with the data discourages release. The apprehension to release data limits data available to researchers making them losers as well. If data were released, researchers would be able to expedite research and provide s olutions to prevalent health problems 5. Consumers may resent the release of their data, but those trying to benefit them can kindle worthwhile returns.SummaryAdvances in healthcare technology have also given birth to an increase in the amount of big data created by medical devices. Medical big data creates a alone(predicate) set of legal and ethical issues that companies like Safe Heart must, and are, considering. legitimately, acts like HIPAA and the Privacy Act do not sufficiently protect the data of patients. Data can move considerably freely and it is not always transferred in a completely anonymous state. It has been shown that organizations are not use the data in an ethical manner. The release and negligent handling of the data completely invades the privacy of the patient. For marketers, this aids when trying to increase revenue. Due to many of these issues, companies have started to limit what data they share when medical devices generate it. Without well-disposed da ta sets, progress of researchers is slowed and the standard of care for the public falls. Both the benefits and risks must be considered when medical big data is involved.ConclusionsHealth devices transmitting big data are already involved in our lives. It is a real legal issue that HIPAA and the Privacy Act do not govern our health data properly. It is critical that our laws catch up with this rapidly ontogeny technology. A reasonable person may argue that health data should be completely restricted and there should be no transmission, or distribution, at all. It is true that data laws need to be revisited and improved, but complete restriction would be an extreme waste of the potential that medical big data stores. After the laws have been optimized for the technology, the data has the ability to improve health care throughout the nation. Big data can be highly useful for entities like hospitals. Using patient data, hospitals can monitor a patients condition and know more quickl y when they are due to worsen 7. Advanced algorithms can also predict and cooperate to prevent conditions like renal failure, infections, and negative reactions to drugs 7. When physicians are combined with big data indicators, more patients can be helped and conditions can be monitored more reliably than in the past. In conclusion, I think that big data in healthcare should be embraced, but not before we alter the laws governing it.References1 Kalyvas, James R. and Overly, Michael R. Big Data A Business and Legal Guide. Auerbach Publications. 55-58.2 Anderson, Nate. Anonymized data really isntand heres why not. 9/8/09. http//arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/09/your-secrets-live-online-in-databases-of-ruin/3 Njie, Craig Michael Lie. Technical Analysis of the Data Practices and Privacy Risks of 43 general Mobile Health and Fitness Applications. 7/15/2013 http//www.privacyrights.org/mobile-medical-apps-privacy-technologist-research-report.pdf.4 Tanner, Adam. Health enterpriser Deb ates Going To Datas Dark Side. 9/16/14 http//www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2014/09/16/health-entrepreneur-debates-going-to-datas-dark-side/5 Standen, Amy. How Big Data Is Changing Medicine. 9/29/14. http//blogs.kqed.org/science/audio/how-big-data-is-changing-medicine/6 Schmarzo, Bill. Big Data Technologies and Advancements in Healthcare. 3/25/14. https//infocus.emc.com/william_schmarzo/big-data-technologies-and-advancements-in-healthcare/