Opening keynote today was Adam Tanner, regular PPR attendee and author of forthcoming Our Bodies, Our Data: How Companies make Billions Selling Pir Medical Records. If today’s presentation was an indication, this will be a cracking read and one can imagine a TV series spinning off, covering the emergence of large data processing of medical records originating in early student research of sales in pharmacies, gathered by hand. Throw in obfuscation of origins of the early company leaders of RMI, including a Nazi escapee who reinvented his own history in the US, and you have a potboiler of history, industrial development and the milking of huge profits from personal health data. Due out Jan 2017, I’ll be reporting more when I get it.
Did PCORI tell us that informed consent is impossible in the age of big data?
The mid morning panel is examining the role of AI in the use of health data involving Christo Wilson from Northeastern and Adrian Gropper. Interesting issues raised about how ready are we to adopt processes whereby individual’s health records are mined and analyzed to identify health concerns that are brought to people’s attention once they reach some trigger point? More, what do we do when we end up relying on IBM Watson more than a human medical expert to diagnose our conditions? Do we license algorithms? Who is watching those who will use the tools to watch us?