From the article. "Some folks may wonder why companies are implementing this data-sharing agreement. In the past, patient information was sold as a de-identified aggregate and was a valuable resource. In these changing times of data transparency and media sharing, patients want to work with companies that that both respect their privacy and allow for ease of information access. Those companies that do not recognize the patient as the ultimate end-user will be left behind in this new open access frontier.
But what makes this version of Blue Button radical is the potential for third-party applications. We are in an amazing time of open data. Each year, our government opens more and more data sets to allow brilliant minds to hack new answers. Those same minds who are crunching data into large aggregates can apply that knowledge of big data to an individual." Read more
