Thursday, February 28, 2008

Who Owns Your Health Information?

You may have noticed recent articles concerning Microsoft's and Google's interests in data banking health information. Each of these companies (and many others) must deal with this issue: who will own the health data contained in their data banks? Microsoft, Google, and most of the other commercial interests are not health care providers or partners of health care providers, and will not be subject to existing federal and many state health care privacy restrictions. So whom do you, the reader, believe will own your electronic data? What controls would you expect to be placed on the profits to be obtained from exploiting the ownership of your data (and should you share in those profits)? And what limits should be placed on the use of your data?

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