I’m glad someone finally made a visual on this so consumers can get an idea of how the data mining processes work as it is complicated. It’s all about 
queries and that’s what business intelligence software does for the most part. There have been articles out to where medical records are sold for research without having the Safe Harbor suggested data items removed. These are items like phone numbers, social security numbers, names and so forth. Public agencies are exempt from a lot of this so here might be one area of concern.
When selling or sharing confidential data, the information needs to be “worked” and prepared, more than just a simple check for data integrity and it takes some time to remove the data that can identify you so perhaps some are lazy and figure it will be done at the other end, some are bliss and don’t know, or some don’t want to spend the money on a proficient data base employee that knows how to do it…lots of reasons. It’s not that hard to rematch data and of course it all depends on the sources of the data to find “common and unique” IDs to query upon. Sometimes many queries need to be run to nail things down. The list goes on and on with queries and this is a normal procedure done with writing software so any developer can tell you about the power of queries. Listen to any quant, they re-match data all the time in the financial world and don’t blink an eye. Data is data no matter what field one is in and the mechanics to re-match are pretty much the same.
There’s also the non HIPAA covered prescription data out there for sale and one insurer, United Healthcare has been cashing in big on selling this data for years and years. It’s what they do, analytics and data, as evidenced by the AMA court case to where doctors and hospitals were short paid on out of network services for 15 years…all the about the context and profits of the queries that make decisions. I said take the provisions of HIPAA out of the silo and reproduce them in various other areas as we have more entities in healthcare today than we used to, to put the rules out there and aggregate their presence. We talk about “freeing up data” ,well let’s free up some laws and rules and create a better presence. Heck even the IRS didn’t understand HIPAA it appears….but they do like mining you on social networks too…again what context are they using for justification is the big question…
Time to Take HIPAA Out of the Healthcare Silo–Needs to Be Integrated In Overall Privacy Laws Healthcare Information Is All Over The Place And Privacy Efforts Will Fail Without Real Algorithmic Levels of Regulation
The example produced here (below) by Bloomberg is a good visual to show how a query search can work and again unless someone wants your data they may not be taking time to find this out, but on the other hand they can if they want. When settling a claim for example there’s nothing to stop an insurer from looking this up but of course it could not be legally used as documentation for denial so with seeing this, more queries to see if there’s another level to potentially deny a claim and the books are full of them. Instead we get the “silly” digital illiterate stuff to read..sorry but that’s what most of it is…but the real intelligence of course is with insurers and in the financial markets with modelers (and some models that may lie) and the subsequent actions of the algorithms created based on a math model to either reduce or increase risk. You have to be careful on how some of this is used as profits with Algo Duping consumers and the government is very much alive and well.
Lack of Modeling and Algorithm Sleuths and Stalkers In Government, Part of Why We See Such “Silly” HHS and Congressional News About Financial Donations And/Or Solicitations…
In the meantime we have other stories like this with insurers buying data from Master Card and Visa…ok so they have this data in house now and if the process used above has been successful in finding you and your data, well let’s jut query you now with this data and see if you buy junk food…I’m using that as an example due to some recent stories in the news.
Health Insurers and Others Trying to Track Junk Food Consumers Purchase–Attack of the Killer Algorithms for Corporate Profits
Insurance Companies Are Buying Up Consumer Spending Data-Time is Here to License and Tax the Data Sellers-As Insurers Sell Tons of Data, Gets Flawed Data When Data Buyers Uses Out of Context Too
Give this some thought though when someone tells you it was all public information available, which it could have been, but what did the Query Master do with it..all about context and making money or investigations of some sort. In summary here we talk about transparency well, this is 
where it needs to be and all the data that has been opened up by HHS is nice and works well for journalists to analyze and create articles with informational input but does it immediately affect you? Probably not but this does and I call some of this activity the Attack of the Killer Algorithms and started that series two years ago. It is what it is and thus so we should be licensing those who share and sell data, and excise taxing those who sell it as they make billions upon billion with non tangible profits. Works on severs 24/7 every day of the week.
Time Has Come to License and Tax the Data Sellers of the Web, Companies, Banks, Social Networks..Any One Making a Profit-Latest Microsoft/Google Privacy War Helping the Cause –Consumers Deserve to Know What Is Being Sold and To Who in a Searchable Format
Sad too that this epidemic of selling data actually distracts and takes away from R and D with manufacturing that creates jobs as everyone is so busy flipping a buck off an algorithm here that manufacturing loses out as more tend to focus here instead of on using technology to create more tangible products in the US and so the story goes. It’s all about context and watch the videos in the footer of this blog and maybe this message will be a little clearer and half of what you see out there with analytics will end up being a waste of money as the context will be marketed and warped for profit and thus we will end up losing value in the long run with some of what gets produced out there. BD
So Much Money and Profit in the Data Selling, Epidemic, SAP Now Coming in as a Middleman Broker to Interpret Data & Share Profits With Wireless Carriers- Banks/Companies Making Billions
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-05/states-hospital-data-for-sale-puts-privacy-in-jeopardy.html
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