Our Bodies, Our Data: How Companies Make Billions Selling Our Medical Records

Name: Our Bodies, Our Data: How Companies Make Billions Selling Our Medical Records
Brand: Beacon Press
SKU: 9780807033340-V
Price: 1.53 EUR
Availability: InStock
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)

By Adam Tanner

Only 1 item left in stock

Description

How the hidden trade in our sensitive medical information became a multibillion-dollar business, but has done little to improve our health-care outcomes Hidden to consumers, patient medical data has become a multibillion-dollar worldwide trade industry between our health-care providers, drug companies, and a complex web of middlemen. This great medical-data bazaar sells copies of the prescription you recently filled, your hospital records, insurance claims, blood-test results, and more, stripped of your name but possibly with identifiers such as year of birth, gender, and doctor. As computing grows ever more sophisticated, patient dossiers become increasingly vulnerable to reidentification and the possibility of being targeted by identity thieves or hackers. Paradoxically, comprehensive electronic files for patient treatment-the reason medical data exists in the first place-remain an elusive goal. Even today, patients or their doctors rarely have easy access to comprehensive records that could improve care. In the evolution of medical data, the instinct for profit has outstripped patient needs. This book tells the human, behind-the-scenes story of how such a system evolved internationally. It begins with New York advertising man Ludwig Wolfgang Frohlich, who founded IMS Health, the world's dominant health-data miner, in the 1950s. IMS Health now gathers patient medical data from more than 45 billion transactions annually from 780,000 data feeds in more than 100 countries. Our Bodies, Our Data uncovers some of Frohlich's hidden past and follows the story of what happened in the following decades. This is both a story about medicine and medical practice, and about big business and maximizing profits, and the places these meet, places most patients would like to believe are off-limits. Our Bodies, Our Data seeks to spark debate on 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. We, the public, deserve a say in this discussion. After all, it's our data.

Product details

Edition:: 1
Number of Pages:: 248
Release Date:: 2017-01-10
Publication Date:: 2017-01-10
Publisher:: Beacon Press
Languages:: Original: English
ISBN10:: 0807033340
ISBN13:: 9780807033340
Weight:: 522 g
Height:: 160 cm
Width:: 231 cm
Thickness:: 25 cm

Buy on Amazon

Condition

Show less

Very good

Almost no signs of wear. Book pages have no markings, accessories are intact and all other media are in good condition.

Used - very good €1,53

Available immediately

€1,53

Incl. VAT, plus shipping costs

Add to Wishlist

Only 1 item left in stock

Verified second-hand article

Verified second-hand item

Free shipping from 19€

€1,53