Mining Prescription Drug User Data
Like most of you, I assumed that my prescription information and history was private and that only healthcare professionals were privy to it.
By on Aug 11, 2009Like most of you, I assumed that my prescription information and history was private and that only healthcare professionals were privy to it. However, after reading an article in this past Sundays NY Times, I learned how wrong I was! Much to my dismay, I learned that prescription information including the name and dosage of a drug, the name and address of the physician who prescribed as well as a patients address and social security number is a commodity that is regularly bought and sold usually with a patients knowledge or permission. And apparently, this practice is perfectly legal as long as patients names are removed or encrypted before the information is sold, typically to drug manufacturers.
Unfortunately, privacy experts and information technology specialists contend that it isnt difficult to match names, addresses, and social security numbers to reconstruct information that had supposedly been rendered anonymous. To make matters worse, until very recently, federal patient privacy and data security rules were loosely enforced and frequently abused by medical marketers, advertisers, drug manufacturers and retail pharmacies. Finally, re-identifying a patients prescription drug information and history provides drug makers with a powerful tool to target and market drugs to specific patient populations.
Tracking prescriptions and mining prescription data is not newit has been big business for many decades. The major players in the drug mining business are companies like IMS Health, Verispan and CVS Caremark. Also, large discount pharmacy retailers like Walgreens and Target engage in this practice and they all sell their prescription information data to interested parties. Prescription drug data-mining companies say that their services are valuable and warranted because gathering and analyzing information from tens of thousands of patients helps drug manufacturers to identify trends and potential safety and tolerability issues with prescription drugs. Nevertheless, despite assertions that prescription drug data are anonymous when it is sold, class action and private lawsuits alleging this not to be the case have been filed against some of the major players including Walgreens, IMS Health and CVS Caremark. While this is troubling, loopholes in the current prescription drug data mining regulations allow pharmacy companies like Walgreens and others to accept money from drug manufacturers to mail advice and reminders to customers to take their medications without first obtaining their permission. The loopholes also allow drug makers to send customers promotional information and materials about drugs other than the ones that they are already taking.
Under the Obama Administrations $19 billion healthcare stimulus package, selling prescription drug data to drug makers will still be allowed (only if patients names are removed). Also, subsidized marketing by drug makers will be allowed to continue but companies will no longer be able to promote drugs other than those the customer already buys. While the new legislation allows data mining and the sale of prescription drug information to continue, its primary goal is to tighten and insure patient privacy so that personal prescription drug history and information can no longer be used to exploit the buying habits and behaviors of individual American consumers.