Hospitals Are Mining Patients' Credit Card Data to Predict Who Will Get Sick

Rucking_Fetard · 05-07-2014 12:37am #1

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-03/hospitals-are-mining-patients-credit-card-data-to-predict-who-will-get-sick

Imagine getting a call from your doctor if you let your gym membership lapse, make a habit of buying candy bars at the checkout counter, or begin shopping at plus-size clothing stores. For patients of Carolinas HealthCare System, which operates the largest group of medical centers in North and South Carolina, such a day could be sooner than they think.

Carolinas HealthCare, which runs more than 900 care centers, including hospitals, nursing homes, doctors’ offices, and surgical centers, has begun plugging consumer data on 2 million people into algorithms designed to identify high-risk patients so that doctors can intervene before they get sick. The company purchases the data from brokers who cull public records, store loyalty program transactions, and credit card purchases.

Information on consumer spending can provide a more complete picture than the glimpse doctors get during an office visit or through lab results, says Michael Dulin, chief clinical officer for analytics and outcomes research at Carolinas HealthCare. The Charlotte-based hospital chain is placing its data into predictive models that give risk scores to patients. Within two years, Dulin plans to regularly distribute those scores to doctors and nurses who can then reach out to high-risk patients and suggest changes before they fall ill. “What we are looking to find are people before they end up in trouble,” says Dulin, who is a practicing physician.

For a patient with asthma, the hospital would be able to assess how likely he is to arrive at the emergency room by looking at whether he’s refilled his asthma medication at the pharmacy, has been buying cigarettes at the grocery store, and lives in an area with a high pollen count, Dulin says. The system may also look at the probability of someone having a heart attack by considering factors such as the type of foods she buys and if she has a gym membership. “The idea is to use Big Data and predictive models to think about population health and drill down to the individual levels,” he says.

Hmm, not sure about this. Good Intentions, but bound to be abused in some way...Insurance Company get a hold of the Data then Load the Premiums of Cake Lovers:p, I don't know.

Cash is king. Go for a Cycle.

Manach · 05-07-2014 12:45am

There is a measure more data protection in the EU so that this level invasive snooping is limited in the private sector. However, looking at the DPC website, section 8 exemptions don't apply to the the public section. So the Revenue scooping up data is allowed.

gctest50 · 05-07-2014 12:48am

.

buy weedkiller and no new facemask = cinq points
McDonnells too often = cinq points

yes there · 05-07-2014 12:56am

Loving it.
No more GP visits.
No more dealing with bank tellers.
No more unnecessary human interaction at all really. Convenient, efficient and hassle free. The age of M2M is class.

Rucking_Fetard · 25-07-2014 11:41am

Google's New Moonshot Project: the Human Body

Impetus · 02-08-2014 5:47pm

Forget your payment card. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc have massive amounts of data on people doing self-diagnosis of illnesses, etc. Much of which would be extremely interesting to insurers. Searches revealing the possibility of particular diseases would mean that the searcher would find it impossible to get a home mortgage, life insurance, perhaps hospital insurance, travel insurance etc. ie insurers would focus on risk-free clients to maximise their profits - taking premiums from people who have almost zero risk of suffering the illness they are insuring for. Money for old rope... Instead of taking a premium from 1000 people, where the national risk is say 2% of them making a claim. Insurance fraud by another route.

The incompetent idiots in Brussels have done nothing to control the sale of data by search engines, and make sure it (personally identifiable data) is properly anonymized, (which is a non-trivial task). Why - because they (EU commissioners etc) are not elected by the people who pay their salaries and pensions etc.

Rucking_Fetard · 15-10-2014 4:16pm

Rucking_Fetard wrote: »

Insurance Company get a hold of the Data then Load the Premiums of Cake Lovers:p, I don't know.

So this is kinda happening, US Health Insurance Companies are giving Employers (must be the half decent employers cuz I remember reading that the new thing over there was to give employees just enough hours to not have to add them to your company health insurance to begin with - open to correction - fuk the little man) up to 5% Discounts on their premiums if they can get staff to wear fitness trackers (Apple are pushing to get their sh1tty one in under a discount scheme if companys pick theirs) and then get them (staff) into their Target Biometric Range.

Give it a few years and this will be a condition no doubt. Forced on ya. Don't and no Insurance for you.

You name it: Blood glucose levels, arrhythmia, epilepsy, stress, body temperature, heart rate, respiration, sleep patterns, weight, physical movement, and even “medication compliance” (whether or not you take your drugs as directed) — Peppet is convinced it’s all going to be tracked.“The sensors will get smaller and cheaper and easier and less invasive,” says Peppet, “and you are going to be able to build more and more of them into a device. At this point it’s easiest to just assume we’re going to be able to track most health variables.

And then the question is: What does that mean?”

What is it?

Removal of Free Will or something??

What if you're Injured/Disabled? Oops, we'll have to load you.

Christening coming up, better run extra 10 Miles this wk to make up for that or get loaded, it has it's positives but their's no shortage of negatives.

Every country is heading down this broken Path, Health Care System in the US is a disgrace, why would anyone want to copy it?

A Tale of 2 Countries: The Cost of My Mother’s Cardiac Care in the United States and India

$1.43 of every $100 in America goes toward hospital administration

For many people — particularly the safely-driving, actively-exercising people who don’t play stupid games with fire — that future is going to look awfully attractive. But it will also be defined by what Peppet calls “a different kind of discrimination” from the racial or gender discrimination that we’re used to.

“This basic sorting of people into exercisers and non-exercisers,” says Peppet, “and responsible drivers and irresponsible… I think we’re going to start to see people get very uncomfortable with that level of sorting. We may decide this seems like a level of discrimination that we don’t want.”

The discrimination isn’t just between responsible and irresponsible. Peppet believes there could be a form of economic discrimination as well. The rich will always be available to afford their insurance, no matter how fast they drive or many french fries they binge. But the poor won’t have a choice — stay within the right biometric range, or you won’t be able to make the rent.
The age of what Rock Health’s white paper on wearables dubbed “pervasive lifestyle incentive management” is upon us. It is, in some ways, a logical, foreseeable conclusion of the digital revolution. We always knew that our data would define the truth of who we are. Now we should prepare to pay accordingly.
But in any given trade-off we need to be clear about what we are willing to give up for a potential benefit — whether that be cheaper insurance or better health or both. If the merger of fitness tracking with health insurance helps an overweight nation get its diet under control, that’s great news. But if a future where health risks can be priced exactly means that the sick and lazy are penalized, and the poor are monitored every second of their lives, we may regret grabbing for that discount so eagerly.

Rucking_Fetard · 15-10-2014 4:18pm

linky^^^

Hospitals Are Mining Patients' Credit Card Data to Predict Who Will Get Sick

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