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Larry Page: Healthcare Data Mining Could Save 100,000 Lives a Year

Posted by Soulskill on from the minority-report-but-for-hospitals dept.

An anonymous reader writes Google often gets criticism for its seemingly boundless desire for data collection and analysis, but the company says it has higher ambitions than just figuring out how best to serve advertising. Speaking to the NY Times, Larry Page said, "We get so worried about these things that we don't get the benefits Right now we don't data-mine healthcare data. If we did we'd probably save 100,000 lives next year." By "these things," he means privacy concerns and fear that the data might be misused. But he also pointed to Street View as a case where privacy concerns mostly melted away after people used it and found it helpful. "In the early days of Street View, this was a huge issue, but it's not really a huge issue now. People understand it now and it's very useful. And it doesn't really change your privacy that much. A lot of these things are like that."

3 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. True in theory by Thinking+Tom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is true, healthcare data mining could save many lives. The problem is nobody trusts health insurance companies because most of them (a) deliberately make it hard to deal with them in order to get people to give up on collecting claims, (b) refuse to cover at least some of the people we know when they need medical treatment, and (c) limit the quality of care received from most doctors. So nobody trusts them to abstain from using the information to come up with some reason to exclude you either from coverage in the marketplace or for a particular condition.

  2. Apples and Oranges by Qzukk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The number of people who don't get hired because the shrub in their front yard is trimmed crooked is considerably lower than the number of people who don't get hired because they have MS, cancer or some other chronic disease that will cost the company's insurer big bucks and drive up the cost of insurance and cost the company in lost productivity when they're incapacitated. Oh sorry, I meant, don't get hired because they "aren't a good fit with the company culture".

    --
    If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
    1. Re:Apples and Oranges by ilsaloving · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As I don't have mod points, I'll just reply and say that you are correct, and it's not limited to just that.

      There have already been documented incidents where people in Canada have been denied entry into the states just because they went into a hospital a decade ago for depression.

      Unlike StreetView, it has *already* been demonstrated that easy access to health information will guarantee abuse.