To most Americans, the name MarketScan means nothing. But most Americans mean everything to MarketScan.
As a repository of sensitive patient information, the company’s databases churn silently behind the scenes of their medical care, scooping up their most guarded secrets: the diseases they have, the drugs they’re taking, the places their bodies are broken that they haven’t told anyone but their doctor. The family of databases that make up MarketScan now include the records of a stunning 270 million Americans, or 82% of the population.
The vast reach of MarketScan, and its immense value, is unmistakable. Last month, a private equity firm announced that it would pay $1 billion to buy the databases from IBM. It was by far the most valuable asset left for IBM as the technology behemoth cast off its foundering Watson Health business.
Imagine how easy it would be for companies to hire only people in tip-top health, and disregard anyone with even the smallest of preexisting conditions. This data is hugely valuable to just about anyone.
This indeed is disturbing.
This is the kind of thing that is both essential and terrifying at the same time. The collated data is invaluable for research, being able to corrolate side effects of drugs across a massive spectrum of people gives information on a scale that no human trial can. The terrifying side is quite self evident, using that data in immoral ways.
Tell me how that would prevent https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/02/doubling-opioid-overdose-deaths-global-growth-lancet-stanford-study as https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55939224 just have to pay a little extra to get fine (not fined) with it ? You mean corporate businesses are known to have the highest moral standards ? May I recall you just the last 20 years of crisis due to banking and industry going full berserk ? Because capitalism is so good, free market is self balanced, liberalism is liberty ?
A company I interviewed for (Accenture) outright asked me if I have any chronic or pre-existing conditions. Review was in Greece btw for a position in their Athens office. In retrospect, it’s good I didn’t end up working for them, because this is indicative of other corporate culture issues.
PS: This is why you should never buy into the “family” and “team” rhetoric, only pretend to. I can make an exception for companies who prove to deserve it down the road. For example, the company I work for may qualify, as we had one guy on 7-month leave due to health issues and they didn’t fire him, despite him being a newcomer with no deep knowledge of the internal systems.
This isn’t even the biggest database out there of this info.
Optum and Surescripts, two names you wouldn’t know outside the healthcare space, have significantly larger data sets. Surescripts has prescription data for most of the US. Optum has analytics and medical data on most of the US, in addition to being one of the largest healthcare providers in the country.
This was a rapidly devaluing asset because Optum dropped billions on companies like the Advisory Board and thousands of physicians while IBM overpaid for talent that left.
Small companies in healthcare are required to go to great lengths to keep your medical data private and are punished even for the most minor of infraction because of HIPAA but huge companies can just collect and sell the same data for huge profit with no consequences? Some racket they got going on but I guess that’s the norm for “healthcare” in the US.
By breaching HIPAA laws. lovely.