Mining Prescription Drug User Data
.jpg)
I suspect that a majority of BioJobBlog readers have at one time or another been prescribed a drug to treat a particular medical condition or ailment. Like 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 Sunday’s 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 patient’s 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 patient’s names are removed or encrypted before the information is sold, typically to drug manufacturers.
Unfortunately, privacy experts and information technology specialists contend that it isn’t 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 patient’s 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 new—it 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 Administration’s $19 billion healthcare stimulus package, selling prescription drug data to drug makers will still be allowed (only if patient’s 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.
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!
.jpg)
Over the past few years, a number of search engines designed for the life sciences have appeared. I thought it might be informative for BioJobBlog readers to list some of the more popular ones and how they are used. I want to warn you in advance that this is not a comprehensive list. That said, if I’ve inadvertently omitted your favorite search engine, please feel free contact me or simply list it in the comments section for this post.
The 
Vincent Racaniello, an intrepid virologist and 
