Medical information accumulated during therapeutic treatment
over the years can have a tremendous impact on medical progress and
treatment. Medical companies are using these data to develop
advanced technological means to identify at-risk patients even
prior to the outburst of an illness, adjust drug dosage to
patients' characteristics, develop medical research more
rapidly and efficiently, and derive medical insights and
conclusions that could not have been reached by human thinking.
Naturally, this activity raises questions: who owns the medical
information in the HMOs' and hospitals' data base? Can a
researcher access these data base and how? And how may we ensure
that medical and scientific progress does not infringe on
patients' privacy?
