Assignment 5
Drug makers Mine Data for trial patients
The article
I picked was called Drug makers mine data for trial patients. The article was
published on November 3rd by Carol Eisenburg from bloom berg
business week. The article sparked my interest because it talked about how a
group of people are planning to buy hospital records so they have them and can
access them in New York so they can help identify and enroll patients in their
drug studies. It also said that companies spend so much money, over a billion
dollars bringing in new drugs to the market because they can’t find enough
patients to do the required testing’s; so this way they want to pay hospitals
to go through their health records of their patients. They want to go through
the data gathered and enroll people in the drug studies; they are suppose to
make $75 million a year for the hospitals and would obviously save them an extraordinary
amount of time and money. The companies that are going to help develop this
system is Pfizer, Merck, Roche, Johnson & Johnson, Bayer healthcare, and
Quintiles and Oracle. The federal law bars medical providers the hospitals and
insurers from giving out information such as names, addresses, and even social
security numbers! So in this process, when the drug company decides it’s time
to test a new product they would pay up and get a list of patients who match trials
requirements for testing. And each time they pay up for this information is anywhere
between $50,000-$200,000. This may seem like a whole lot, but compared to how
much they would have to pay before by testing the results over and over they
are saving millions of dollars. One they realize how many patients will qualify
for testing they get approval and the hospital would the contact the patient’s
doctor. Then if the patient consults to it, then they can access personal information.
So they are technically not just giving out any information they are just
getting a pool of people who would work then asking them if they would like to
participate. I think it is fine as like as they enclose any personal information,
and I definitely think they the patient needs to say yes before they receive
ANY information on them or that is an extreme violation of privacy.
Kim I agree with you completely on this topic. I also find that this is very interesting due to the fact that I never was aware that drug testing companies struggled so much with finding people to test out medications. I know that medications are changing all the time due to new break throughs and such but do not think that buying health records off of the hospital is the way to go. You stated that the patient would have to contest prior to having any of their information released so why do they need the health records if the person already agreed, wasn't that there original issue in the first place. I find it a little weird that hospitals will be making all kinds of money off these drug companies for the benefit of themselves and not the patient. I know for a fact that I would not feel comfortable with my whole lives health records floating around.
ReplyDeleteThe companies that are going to help develop this system seem like they are making it easier for an increase in the public health. Like you said, it is going to make revenue for the hospitals which is a plus. But what i feel is the biggest benefit is the chance of creating drugs to potentially cure specific illness'. With them asking hospitals for patients records may seem corrupt, i agree that it's not as bad as it sounds. As you said in your article they are using the records to contact the patients, and if they accept to be tested, then the studies would be done. Who knows maybe these drug mines are cooking up some important drugs. Maybe limitless will be developed and will turn scrubs to studs. Any-who, i enjoyed your article and learned a lot. Good stuff!
ReplyDelete