Forbes reports on plans by IMS Health to go public. According to the report, the company has assembled “85 percent of the world’s prescriptions by sales revenue and approximately 400 million comprehensive, longitudinal, anonymous patient records.” IMS Health then sells the data and reports to the top 100 global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, advertisers, consulting firms and other government and financial organizations. In a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, IMS Health said it processes data from 45 billion health records per year. Meanwhile, an All Voices article looks into the fine line between marketing and health privacy, and according to The California Report, health kiosks pose several privacy risks. In a column for The New York Times, one doctor opines on the pros and cons of “Googling” his patients. “I am tempted to prescribe that physicians should never look online for information about their patients, though I think the practice will become only more common,” he writes.
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