Increased Use of RWD Can Threaten Patient Privacy

Electronic health records (EHRs) are an important source of real world data (RWD). However, as more companies are lured by the potential benefits and applications of these data sources, experts point to an increased patient privacy risk. Kenneth Mandl, director of the computational health informatics program at Boston Children’s Hospital, noted that privacy concerns need to be considered as part of the RWD pipeline.

“The electronic health record has ushered in a golden era of precision medicine and created a gold rush into a burgeoning third-party data market. On Wednesday, real-world health data company Datavant and health record IT firm Ciox Health announced a merger that values the combined companies at $7 billion and creates a network of more than 2,000 hospitals and 15,000 clinics.” Read more here.

(Source: Katie Palmer, STAT News, 6/9/21)