title: Selling health data: de-identification, privacy, and speech.
abstract: Two court cases that involve selling prescription data for pharmaceutical marketing affect biomedical informatics, patient and clinician privacy, and regulation. Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc. et al. in the United States and R v. Department of Health, Ex Parte Source Informatics Ltd. in the United Kingdom concern privacy and health data protection, data de-identification and reidentification, drug detailing (marketing), commercial benefit from the required disclosure of personal information, clinician privacy and the duty of confidentiality, beneficial and unsavory uses of health data, regulating health technologies, and considering data as speech. Individuals should, at the very least, be aware of how data about them are collected and used. Taking account of how those data are used is needed so societal norms and law evolve ethically as new technologies affect health data privacy and protection.
authors.forename: Bonnie
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kaplan
mesh_terms: D003132:Commerce / Q000941:ethics*; D003219:Confidentiality / Q000941:ethics*; D057225:Data Mining / Q000941:ethics*; D004345:Drug Industry / Q000941:ethics*; D011307:Drug Prescriptions; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000941:ethics*; D006801:Humans; D010067:Ownership / Q000941:ethics*; D000068241:Personally Identifiable Information / Q000941:ethics; D018907:Privacy; D006113:United Kingdom; D014481:United States
keywords: EU Data Protection Directive; Ex Parte Source Informatics Ltd.; HIPPA; R v. Department of Health; Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc.; big data; confidentiality; data mining; de-identification; health data privacy; health data sale; health records; pharmaceutical marketing