As technological innovation continues to revolutionize healthcare, there is a growing concern about the privacy of digitized health data. While it is imperative that personal information is protected, according to Robert Wachter, MD, chair of the University of California San Francisco's department of medicine, it is equally crucial to ensure that this data can still be shared across platforms.
In an article for Wired UK, Dr. Wachter wrote about how, in order to meet patients' rising expectations and make the system more efficient, the healthcare industry must go all-in on digitization. This transformation, he predicted, will include increased telemedicine resources, artificial intelligence-powered recommendations and smarter, evidence-backed medical interventions.
All of these changes will require medical data to be shared between parties and across platforms, but privacy concerns should not put a stop to technological advancement. "In the next 10 years we will have no choice but to develop secure ways to share data between health systems and companies with digital expertise," Dr. Wachter wrote.
"By sharing data we will be able to use AI to analyze the data of millions of patients to reveal patterns and insights that I, as a practicing clinician, couldn't possibly have discovered on my own," he explained. "These will guide me to make better predictions, and patients to take the right actions."
Attaining this free yet secure flow of data will require advanced de-identification methods, more explicit patient consent and dedicated ethical oversight, all of which pose significant challenges but are absolutely necessary for forward progress, according to Dr. Wachter.
"Building a firewall between healthcare systems and digital companies that have transformed every other industry they've touched — largely for the better — will only ensure that we face a future where we are unable to innovate our way out of the fundamental problems facing healthcare today," he wrote.
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