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Amazon Starts Selling Software To Mine Patient Health Records (wsj.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Amazon is starting to sell software to mine patient medical records (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) for information that doctors and hospitals could use to improve treatment and cut costs, the latest move by a big technology company into the health care industry. The software can read digitized patient records and other clinical notes, analyze them and pluck out key data points, Amazon says. The company is expected to announce the launch Tuesday. Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud-computing division, has been selling such text-analysis software to companies outside medicine for use in areas such as travel booking, customer support and supply-chain management. The technology's health-care application is the newest effort by Amazon to tap into the lucrative market.
Amazon officials say the company's software developers trained the system using a process known as deep learning to recognize all the ways a doctor might record notes. "We're able to completely, automatically look inside medical language and identify patient details," including diagnoses, treatments, dosage and strengths, "with incredibly high accuracy," said Matt Wood, general manager of artificial intelligence at Amazon Web Services. During testing, the software performed on par or better than other published efforts, and can extract data on patients' diseases, prescriptions, lab orders and procedures, said Taha Kass-Hout, a senior leader with Amazon's health-care and artificial intelligence efforts. The project is called Amazon Comprehend Medical, which "allows developers to process unstructured medical text and identify information such as patient diagnosis, treatments, dosages, symptoms and signs, and more," according to a blog post. Dr. Kass-Hout says Amazon Web Services won't see the data processed by its algorithms, "which will be encrypted and unlocked by customers who have the key," reports WSJ.
Amazon officials say the company's software developers trained the system using a process known as deep learning to recognize all the ways a doctor might record notes. "We're able to completely, automatically look inside medical language and identify patient details," including diagnoses, treatments, dosage and strengths, "with incredibly high accuracy," said Matt Wood, general manager of artificial intelligence at Amazon Web Services. During testing, the software performed on par or better than other published efforts, and can extract data on patients' diseases, prescriptions, lab orders and procedures, said Taha Kass-Hout, a senior leader with Amazon's health-care and artificial intelligence efforts. The project is called Amazon Comprehend Medical, which "allows developers to process unstructured medical text and identify information such as patient diagnosis, treatments, dosages, symptoms and signs, and more," according to a blog post. Dr. Kass-Hout says Amazon Web Services won't see the data processed by its algorithms, "which will be encrypted and unlocked by customers who have the key," reports WSJ.
Tax returns?
That health is a lucrative market.
Captain DedhorÃY
Maybe they can tell me what this lump on left nut is.
what about hippa and other laws? must they give the key to the patient?
also will Amazon make it so that the patient can key with out needing to buy the software as under the law providers cannot charge a fee for searching for or retrieving your information,
This from a company that built itself on doing retail for a decade and not making a dime doing it.
They are in too many markets at once, time to break em' up.
Well, yeah, I am fat as hell? But I know rust and so that makes me a fedora wearing stud. Why I never get laid is because... uh... well... we need a code of conduct
Socialism seems to work fine in Europe and Canadian medicine and other things where it's actually being applied, as opposed to kleptocrat null-market oil-economies with debt and no assets like Venezuela.
People should hunt retards like you instead, more meat and less sentience getting in the way.
They won't need to charge the patient for their data. Not how they will monetize this.
They will make more than enough selling all your data to third parties.
I work on medical scheduling and billing software, and I've never heard of "hippa." What do you mean?
Have gnu, will travel.
Amazon, Bezos, Anti-american. Lock them up! Danger to #MAGA!
Don't be a dick. He means HIPAA, and you know it.
The Left is always angry when presented with the facts. That's why you can only consume Fake News. Here's another fact. Canada and Europe are second choices for migrants. They only go there if they can't make it to the US.
I'm guessing they are not going to hand out their super duper software with deep learning wizardry to every clinic and hospital. So they are going to see the data. This sentence is probably a lie: "Amazon Web Services won't see the data processed by its algorithms"
The Left lol? You just got your ASS kicked by facts, no wonder you're so angry. Just imagine it's Putin and take the load like Trump would. That's a good know-nothing Fox News bitch, just take it. You like being fucked with the facts.
Take it bitch. Take that pillowcase off your head and suck this cockkk
I live in a socialist country in Europe... Not everything is fine.. And a bad mix for such countries include clueless inkompetent politikkens and greedy US companies without moral.... Keep your medical software in the US, we do not want it here in Europe
No idea what hippa is? Probably true which is the sad fact for the industry.
Uber alles, baby. Uber alles!
Say goodnight to Hillary, Bill.
I was at a medical technology conference a couple of years ago and mining people's health data to sell to pharma as analytics was being talked about as the next big thing (of course with AI and blockchain). You could see all the VC types drooling. A large chinese delegation was talking about doing it on blockchain and was actually working with NIH already.
P.S. Apple talks a lot about privacy too but don't believe it, this bullshit is exactly what I thought of when they announced their health info intentions too.
Isn't that what got Donnie Kompromat under Putin's thumb in the first place?
The data on any particular individual will be fully anonymized so people feel comfortable at first.
Until "unscannable" becomes a problem and then everyone will be in for some retrieving.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Hell No !! Our medical records too? No, NO No no noo. Download your neighbor's medical record, "free shipping w/ Prime"
They made software that can accurately READ A DOCTOR'S HANDWRITING!?
This is AMAZING news! Everyone else in the medical industry labors trying to decipher the arcane hieroglyphics of their scripts! This will revolutionize the industry!!
It's weird that Hillary Clinton rents your head to keep her shit in all these years later. You must one of the children we're not leaving behind..
I'm proud of Grandpa. He killed so many of those dumb, cowardly inbred Nazi faggots over there. We can only hope to walk in his footsteps back home.
ALL NAZI FAGGOTS WILL BE HANGED, HU RAH AMERICA IS GREATER WITH EACH ONE KILLED
I have many clients that would love a report of all that went wrong. It is crazy hard to get all these records from all the different providers.
The data on any particular individual will be fully anonymized ...
Uh huh, sure it will be.
And that was supposed to make browser data not connectable to an individual.
Pretty sure that's not what it does and you'll never benefit from this, it will only screw you silently from afar, slightly, forever. But I too would like it if it worked your way, that'd be great.
Amazon does not sell medical /doctors services. It should.
Then it can generate more by people swapping plans. The sector is ripe.
How much is that MRI - That test? The time you waste. What if I drive for 3 hours across the state border. What if I am young healthy and lean - Doctors charge more for fabags and lardasses because of complications.
How much is this , that . How much for an appointment for that specialist.
And it should also be global. All my dental work is.
That’s an oddly vague qualifier. Are insurance companies also “customers who have the key”? What about credit agencies or banks? What about advertisers?
If my doctor is the only one who’d have access, I’d expect a much clearer statement of that fact. I’m guessing there’s a reason they were so vague.
#DeleteChrome
I bet bezos has a medical degree and learned to be a surgeon in his spare time
Here's another fact. Canada and Europe are second choices for migrants. They only go there if they can't make it to the US.
Other way around mate.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
how long till it all gets leaked? days? weeks at most.
Is this already being used for advertising purposes? I had a potentially serious health issue last month, and received my very first snail mail advertisement for "cremation services" 30 days later. I'm feeling like the modern tech economy has become a committee of vultures circling over all of our heads.
Obvious Uses. Discrimination and weeding out high risk patients.
Did they google sore back, heart pains, sore joints or some medicine as a marker. As they mined credit card data, they know if you smoke or drink and how much.
People will magically get dearer plans with higher more limited copays.
Search for information never pays off. Your last year of life is the most expensive and unavoidable. the money is in paying you to switch so someone else wears the risk.
A bit like hurricane and flooding cover - people call the insurance mobs 48 hours before it hits.
Go try to get your medical records. Tell the hospitals you own them. Hahahaha. Good luck. Your rights are an illusion, and, as our populace has been showing that we're happy to just sit by and watch them destroyed, expect to see more violation of things you thought were your rights.
This sort of thing is illegal in, developed, civilised countries. The USA considers the purpose of Hospitals, doctors etc to be different from the rest of us. We think that they are to do with health, sickness, prevention etc. As yours are run by people whose prime function is providing shareholders with dividends, human welfare related uses are often far less important.
Google tried some of its stuff here but that has come to an (apparent) end.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
The data on any particular individual will be fully anonymized
Doubtful. You don't go through the trouble of HIPAA compliance then decide fuck it, we're going to use anonymous data instead.
I think you mis-spelled "Right". You know, the people who listen to Goebbels / Hannity rant on Faux News.
What compliance is can change AC.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
a great product that makes Amazon a lot of Money and fucks over the people as most tech companies are doing now a days. Yeay, another trust-worthy company.
I'm guessing not EPIC, which explains why your software sucks.
for information that doctors and hospitals could use to improve treatment and cut costs, the latest move by a big technology company into the health care industry. The software can read digitized patient records and other clinical notes, analyze them and pluck out key data points, Amazon says.
If they think that cutting costs and improving treatment will be the primary use of these tools they are either incredibly naive or lying. This sort of data mining might get used for some research but it will mostly be used to make someone a pile of money at our expense.
"We're able to completely, automatically look inside medical language and identify patient details," including diagnoses, treatments, dosage and strengths, "with incredibly high accuracy,"
Yeah, no way that could possibly be abused...
Will insurance companies get access to the data and use it to raise rates?
No need, they probably already have it.
>> which will be encrypted and unlocked by customers who have the key
How would Grandma get a key?
Unless the 'key' is a keypair that I generate and can hold the private key myself, then it's not secure.
How wonderful it is of Amazon to glean "information that doctors and hospitals could use to improve treatment and cut costs". Surly amazon is not doing this for personal gain!
PUT DOWN YOUR HALO, Amazon! We know to never trust you!
This will lead to worse health care. Why? Here's what happens. Today, when I look at the electronic chart produced by my doctor visit, there are about a dozen things that it claims he did, which he in fact did NOT do. Such as, check abdomen for sensitivity, check lower legs for fluid retention, and numerous others, depending on specialty. He did not have to write those. They are typically as I understand it, either opt-out, or just "check all" in the crappy EHR systems.
Amazon's AI is going to comb through millions of records and discover that checking abdomen for sensitivity was not effective in diagnosing appendicitis, or some other thing it is supposed to look for. Once this brilliant finding is published, that will no longer be something that is recommended.
So, in essence, it will be determined that certain procedures don't help, well, because they are not actually done. Unfortunately, most programmers don't really understand that what is in medical records is mainly garbage. I find other errors about 90% of the time. Medication lists in those records are also garbage, often have wrong drugs listed, or drugs that were discontinued years ago.
They already have it. I used to write software for a pharmacy, your insurance company has TONS of already simply because everything you do gets coded and billed to them separately (look up ICD 10 codes). It's why medical billing is such a huge business and why your 2 doctor physicians office employs 10 different people that aren't doctors. And believe me, your insurance company is already paying someone else to mine this data and analyze it 1000 different ways.
Ah yes, another tech company that thinks it can do miracles in healthcare. Tons of companies have been trying to do natural language processing of medical notes, they all pretty much fail for one reason or another. The only time it works is for VERY specific scenarios where the question is extremely narrow and they spend a huge amount of time training the system for that question.
Dr. Kass-Hout? Cash-out? Really?
Books shipped right to your door.
Before anyone beats up on Amazon too much, and yes, they are a shitty company, keep in mind that Google and FaceBook and all the rest are doing this same shit.
Silicon Valley sold her soul for stock options long ago.
On a personal level, I'm a fierce privacy advocate.
Professionally, I work in healthcare data/analysis and I can tell you this is very exciting. We have tons of unstructured/freetext data floating around that nobody uses because it's too hard. We rely on structured data points (date, scores, measurements) which tell only a part of the story. So now finally we have a really well researched and put together service, where we can call the Comprehend API to run it across our data and give us all kinds of new insights into patient/doctor activity that we currently have no sight of.
This brings a very sophisticated and powerful capability into the hands of cash-poor health services to understand how to deliver services better.
Hej! Nasi tu byli!
Door-to-door sales drones. After analyzing your health records, we calculate a 87% chance that you will want to buy herpes cream, before even getting the results (trust us, you want it, we can see your partner's records too), so we brought you one. Buy it now and get 4% off. Sign up for Prime and get 10% off.
A few years ago we adopted the ICD-10 (the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, a medical classification list by the World Health Organization, 10th revision).
The number of diagnosis increased from roughly 10,000 to 30,000. Some new diagnosis make sense, example, we can now code for pain on the right side of the neck or the left side.
Whoop-de-doo.
Some useful diagnosis or parameters are not included.
The major use of these codes is for billing, and the facility and definitions do make billing better. Much better than without it.
A patient's condition often has overlapping diagnosis that are equally valid.
Another benefit, maybe, is coding for mild, moderate, severe or acute conditions. But, there is probably a fair amount of variation is who gets a moderate and who gets a severe.
Bottom line for the software that is the subject of this thread, is it will probably require coding, and the easiest path would be to use the pre-existing codes. But, achieving accurate and consistent codes applied to real patients is difficult.