Marshall Allen
ProPublica.org
Originally posted July 17, 2018
Here are two excerpts:
With little public scrutiny, the health insurance industry has joined forces with data brokers to vacuum up personal details about hundreds of millions of Americans, including, odds are, many readers of this story. The companies are tracking your race, education level, TV habits, marital status, net worth. They’re collecting what you post on social media, whether you’re behind on your bills, what you order online. Then they feed this information into complicated computer algorithms that spit out predictions about how much your health care could cost them.
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At a time when every week brings a new privacy scandal and worries abound about the misuse of personal information, patient advocates and privacy scholars say the insurance industry’s data gathering runs counter to its touted, and federally required, allegiance to patients’ medical privacy. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, only protects medical information.
“We have a health privacy machine that’s in crisis,” said Frank Pasquale, a professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law who specializes in issues related to machine learning and algorithms. “We have a law that only covers one source of health information. They are rapidly developing another source.”
The information is here.
Showing posts with label Tracking Health Status. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tracking Health Status. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 8, 2018
Saturday, February 2, 2013
More Using Electronics to Track Their Health
By MILT FREUDENHEIM
The New York Times
Published: January 27, 2013
Whether they have chronic ailments like diabetes or just want to watch their weight, Americans are increasingly tracking their health using smartphone applications and other devices that collect personal data automatically, according to health industry researchers.
“The explosion of mobile devices means that more Americans have an opportunity to start tracking health data in an organized way,” said Susannah Fox, an associate director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, which was to release the national study on Monday. Many of the people surveyed said the experience had changed their overall approach to health.
More than 500 companies were making or developing self-management tools by last fall, up 35 percent from January 2012, said Matthew Holt, co-chairman of Health 2.0, a market intelligence project that keeps a database of health technology companies. Nearly 13,000 health and fitness apps are now available, he said.
The Pew study said 21 percent of people who track their health use some form of technology.
They are people like Steven Jonas of Portland, Ore., who uses an electronic monitor to check his heart rate when he feels stressed. Then he breathes deeply for a few minutes and watches the monitor on his laptop as his heart slows down.
“It’s incredibly effective in a weird way,” he said.
Mr. Jonas said he also used electronic means to track his mood, weight, mental sharpness, sleep and memory.
The entire story is here.
The New York Times
Published: January 27, 2013
Whether they have chronic ailments like diabetes or just want to watch their weight, Americans are increasingly tracking their health using smartphone applications and other devices that collect personal data automatically, according to health industry researchers.
“The explosion of mobile devices means that more Americans have an opportunity to start tracking health data in an organized way,” said Susannah Fox, an associate director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, which was to release the national study on Monday. Many of the people surveyed said the experience had changed their overall approach to health.
More than 500 companies were making or developing self-management tools by last fall, up 35 percent from January 2012, said Matthew Holt, co-chairman of Health 2.0, a market intelligence project that keeps a database of health technology companies. Nearly 13,000 health and fitness apps are now available, he said.
The Pew study said 21 percent of people who track their health use some form of technology.
They are people like Steven Jonas of Portland, Ore., who uses an electronic monitor to check his heart rate when he feels stressed. Then he breathes deeply for a few minutes and watches the monitor on his laptop as his heart slows down.
“It’s incredibly effective in a weird way,” he said.
Mr. Jonas said he also used electronic means to track his mood, weight, mental sharpness, sleep and memory.
The entire story is here.
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