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With 'Obamacare' Kicking In, Microsoft Sees a Health-Data Windfall
curtwoodward writes "Now that President Obama's federal health care reform is past its major political hurdles — and with renewed focus on out-of-control costs in healthcare — companies that sell 'big data' software are licking their chops. The reason: Healthcare has huge piles of information that is being used in new ways, to track patient admissions, spending, and much more. From hospitals to insurance companies, they'll all need new ways of crunching those numbers. It's basically an entirely new field that will dwarf the spending growth in traditional data-heavy industries like finance, retail and marketing, a Microsoft regional sales GM says."
What big health care data? I'm not joking when I saw that the last place I would ever trust sensitive or critical information is a hospital...
What big health care data you ask? The data that your government (also known as your new healthcare provider) is going to demand, that's what data.
From how fast you drive to how much fattening butter (in grams, weighed by the smart container that reported it to your smart fridge), expect data to be collected everywhere. Isn't it ironic how the hipsters think all this new smart tech is really "cool" today, without even thinking of the consequences in the future.
And expect that data to be used against you, to charge you more for the lifestyle you want.
As far as security goes, no comment when it comes to our government. InfoSec seems to be the least of their concerns, especially when it's your data.
Hospitals aren't buying into software because of "Obamacare" (or the Affordable Care Act, if brevity isn't your thing). Hospitals are buying into software because of the HITECH act, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). They're getting more Medicare reimbursement for showing meaningful use of their software, so that's the trigger, not the ACA.