With 'Obamacare' Kicking In, Microsoft Sees a Health-Data Windfall 201
curtwoodward writes "Now that President Obama's federal health care reform is past its major political hurdles — and with renewed focus on out-of-control costs in healthcare — companies that sell 'big data' software are licking their chops. The reason: Healthcare has huge piles of information that is being used in new ways, to track patient admissions, spending, and much more. From hospitals to insurance companies, they'll all need new ways of crunching those numbers. It's basically an entirely new field that will dwarf the spending growth in traditional data-heavy industries like finance, retail and marketing, a Microsoft regional sales GM says."
Re:Big healthcare data? (Score:5, Interesting)
What big health care data? I'm not joking when I saw that the last place I would ever trust sensitive or critical information is a hospital...
What big health care data you ask? The data that your government (also known as your new healthcare provider) is going to demand, that's what data.
From how fast you drive to how much fattening butter (in grams, weighed by the smart container that reported it to your smart fridge), expect data to be collected everywhere. Isn't it ironic how the hipsters think all this new smart tech is really "cool" today, without even thinking of the consequences in the future.
And expect that data to be used against you, to charge you more for the lifestyle you want.
As far as security goes, no comment when it comes to our government. InfoSec seems to be the least of their concerns, especially when it's your data.
Re:Same gov't gives us the TSA and summary executi (Score:2, Interesting)
Rail against the out-of-control government that gives us the TSA, the Patriot Act, and summarily executes US citizens.
Then cheer it on when it takes over 1/6 of the US economy?
And you claim to care about your rights and freedoms?
WHY THE FUCK DO YOU WANT TO GIVE THAT OVERWEENING GOVERNMENT THAT MUCH *MORE* POWER?!?!?!
UK Economy: $2.4 trillion
UK Heath expenditure: under $200 billion.
That's 1/12th of the economy, sounds like you overspend on your health system. Shouldn't the competition keep prices down?
First, US government involvement has historically lead to anything but keeping prices down.
Second, since most US health care is through private insurance and through private transactions, the US population basically spends that much on health care for the simple reason they want to.
Third, Obamacare is fundamentally dysfunctional. It's two main goals of greater health care coverage and lower cost are diametrically opposed. It's pretty damn impossible to increase demand without increasing cost. Of course, giving everyone "coverage" and then rationing health care would do that. Hmmm, would the same cynical demagogue who railed against the Patriot Act as a candidate but then went well beyond anything in that Act to actually conduct "extrajudicial killing" of US citizens once elected to President, hmmm, would a person who could do THAT really care what the actual results would be as long as he could claim some great accomplishment that would make his useful idiot constituency happy?
The premise of this article is entirely wrong (Score:5, Interesting)