The Fight Over Drug Data Mining

(page 2 of 2)

Governments also purchase consumer data—and that alone could prompt the Supreme Court to hear the case. "If you want to track swine flu, you might want to know who's prescribing Tamiflu," says Jaideep Bajaj, managing director at ZS Associates, a marketing consulting firm in Boston that works with more than 100 pharmaceutical companies. "How do you do that without the data?"

Questioning Anonymity

Privacy advocates, however, believe laws such as the one passed in New Hampshire are vital for protecting consumers. Randy Frankel, IMS vice-president for external affairs, says his company uses sophisticated encryption technology to shield patients' identities. What's more, the American Medical Assn. allows physicians to request anonymity, and about 22,000 docs have done so. But critics fear such technology could fail or that enterprising hackers could somehow glean enough details from the data to determine who has what diseases. "No one knows how strong de-identifying technologies really are," says Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "It's really dangerous to make the assumption that there's no privacy interest here. We're being misled." Says Frankel: "There has been no breach. The groups screaming the loudest are doing so based on hypotheticals."

IMS's first chance to get a hearing at the Supreme Court won't be its last. Legislation similar to New Hampshire's Prescription Information Law has passed in Vermont and Maine. The company intends to fight those, if necessary, all the way to the top.

Weintraub is a senior writer for BusinessWeek's Science & Technology department.

Business Exchange

Track and share business topics across the Web.