Would you choose privacy?

Privacy experts are fixated on keeping health data private - tucked away where it is not visible, separate and away from prying eyes.

In health care even a small set of protected health information can tell a health care professional a lot about you.

For instance, a medication list can be gleaned for conditions based on the type of medication prescribed. Your condition list can provide enough information that the level of chronicity, terminal status or complexity can be understood. Your address or employment provides hints about the level of risk, treatment adherence or types of associated social determinants of health may be affecting your health - and quality of life.

So, a little data in the hands of a trained health profession provides clues about you as an individual and your health status.

Health data also supports safety, reduces medical errors, allows for early pattern recognition that identifies anomalies and gaps in care, and care patterns of high and low health care resource utilization.

Health data can decrease sentinel events - those occurrences that have catastrophic sometimes life ending outcomes.

So, health data tells health professionals and health care compliance and health care data scientist a lot.

If you had to choose between:

1. privacy and safety, or;
2. privacy and higher quality, or;
3. privacy and reduced risk of a bad health care outcome

Would you choose privacy?

The answer is most likely "It depends" This is because most of us believe in individual rights and personal choice. The trade off for privacy are sometimes steeped in unintended consequences.

So while we fight for individual rights and choice - we must consider what we are putting at risk, or the level of harm and the benefit.