Big Data, Predictive Analytics, Health Care, Law, and Ethics

Update: The Moore Foundation has generously paid to make my article available as open access on their website here. Today I am speaking at Health Affairs’ “Using Big Data to Transform Health Care” in DC, that will also launch its new issue devoted to the topic. I have a co-authored paper in the volume entitled “The Legal And Ethical Concerns That Arise From Using Complex Predictive Analytics In Health Care” that has just been released. Ironically the article is behind a paywall (while data wants to be free, I guess big data is different!) Here is the abstract.

Predictive analytics, or the use of electronic algorithms to forecast future events in real time, makes it possible to harness the power of big data to improve the health of patients and lower the cost of health care. However, this opportunity raises policy, ethical, and legal challenges. In this article we analyze the major challenges to implementing predictive analytics in health care settings and make broad recommendations for overcoming challenges raised in the four phases of the life cycle of a predictive analytics model: acquiring data to build the model, building and validating it, testing it in real-world settings, and disseminating and using it more broadly. For instance, we recommend that model developers implement governance structures that include patients and other stakeholders starting in the earliest phases of development. In addition, developers should be allowed to use already collected patient data without explicit consent, provided that they comply with federal regulations regarding research on human subjects and the privacy of health information.

I will also have a related paper on mobile health coming out later this summer that I will blog about when it comes out…

I. Glenn Cohen

I. Glenn Cohen is the James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and current Faculty Director of the Petrie-Flom Center. A member of the inaugural cohort of Petrie-Flom Academic Fellows, Glenn was appointed to the Harvard Law School faculty in 2008. Glenn is one of the world's leading experts on the intersection of bioethics (sometimes also called "medical ethics") and the law, as well as health law. He also teaches civil procedure. From Seoul to Krakow to Vancouver, Glenn has spoken at legal, medical, and industry conferences around the world and his work has appeared in or been covered on PBS, NPR, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, Mother Jones, the New York Times, the New Republic, the Boston Globe, and several other media venues. He was the youngest professor on the faculty at Harvard Law School (tenured or untenured) both when he joined the faculty in 2008 (at age 29) and when he was tenured as a full professor in 2013 (at age 34).

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.