big tech
Microsoft's AI precision health goals
Yesterday Microsoft gave an update on its work with Providence creating "prototype AI tools" for precision health: The first use case is to synthesize lab tests, imaging, and electronic medical record notes to synthesize a "high resolution" representation of a patient to aid in the clinical trial matching process. (Though, as Out of Pocket author Nikhil Krishnan notes, there are a lot of friction points that AI clinical trial matching can't solve.) Hoifung Poon, general manager of Health Futures at Microsoft Research, told my colleague Brittany Trang that he was inspired by the Johns Hopkins Covid-19 dashboard. The hope is that one day, patients might be able to see a dashboard of trials available to them, and researchers see a dashboard of potential patients that match their criteria. With the same tools Microsoft is developing through this project, Poon also envisions decreasing the amount of participants needed in control arms of trials — ie, digital twins — making post-approval pharmacovigilance easier, and fine tuning clinical trials to make them more specific to one type of patient or cancer.
Data privacy
FTC cracks down on telehealth addiction service Monument for sharing health data
Washington has recently taken major actions against telehealth companies for alleged misuse of personal health data, beginning with a Federal Trade Commission complaint late last week against alcohol addiction telehealth company Monument. According to the charge, Monument gave health data to third parties including Meta and Google without users' consent while also deceiving them into believing their data was secure and private, Katie Palmer writes. Under a proposed order to settle the charges, Monument would be prohibited from sharing sensitive data for ad purposes.
That action came after a joint investigation by STAT and The Markup found that Monument was among telehealth companies whose websites used third-party trackers that leaked sensitive information. Read more on the Monument case here.
Cerebral to pay $7 million fine and limit health data use for ads
Monument's not the only target of federal action: online therapy and medication purveyor Cerebral has agreed to limit the consumer data it uses for ad purposes following a new order announced by the FTC on Monday. Cerebral, whose ads you've likely seen on social media and which is perhaps best known for dispensing medication for conditions like anxiety and depression, will also pay $7 million in fines to resolve federal charges that it — like Monument — disclosed users' personal health information to third parties for ad purposes .
"Cerebral violated its customers' privacy by revealing their most sensitive mental health conditions across the Internet and in the mail," FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement, noting that the charge is a "first-of-its-kind prohibition that bans Cerebral from using any health information for most advertising purposes."
The order only applies to Cerebral, and must first be approved by a federal court before it goes into effect.
It's also worth checking out the FTC blog post on consumer health information protections; that agency is "joined at the HIPAA" with the Health and Human Services Department on enforcing federal privacy laws, FTC senior attorney Leslie Fair wrote. Read more from Katie, and me, here.
cybersecurity
Report: The latest on Change Healthcare
A WIRED report suggests that payment processing company and United HealthGroup subsidiary Change Healthcare may be facing yet another ransom demand: Ransomware group RansomHub has said it has four terabytes of Change Healthcare data that it planned to sell to the highest bidder if a ransom wasn't paid. Though WIRED couldn't fully confirm the group's claims, the potential is troubling nonetheless — especially following several weeks of payment disruptions and the establishment of emergency assistance programs for providers. Read more from WIRED.
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