Apparently the Supreme Court is hearing a case about using physicians' Rx habits to target drug marketing efforts. Retail pharmacies are legally required to keep records of every Rx filled, and then they turn around and sell that info to data mining firms, who in turn sell it to pharmas. This helps pharma sales forces see which doctors need the most persuasion and which products are the biggest threats to theirs. Of course patient info is confidential, but doctor Rx habits are fair game, even if it is very upsetting to some. So recently Vermont outlawed this practice (unless the doctor gives consent), though a pharma trade group sued on First Amendment free access to info grounds, and the case has reached the high court.
Depending on how the case plays out, there could be implications for all the other data mining industries out there (Google, Facebook, etc.).
1 comment:
The subtlety (which merits much more consideration) is that aggregate data can (in general) serve to protect patients and consumers; having large amounts of data makes isolating statistically significant patterns with respect to drug interaction, etc. much more tenable. It's too bad the benefits of privacy considerations often get sacrificed for the sake of uninformed paranoia.
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