Big Data for Healthcare: What about Patient Privacy?

President Obama's Affordable Care Act promotes the digitization of millions of medical records to measure outcomes and contain costs. Big Data may also help doctors better understand many diseases, who's most likely to get them and what the best treatments might be. It also makes the most intimate kind of personal information available to the government, insurance and drug companies — even prospective employers. Should patients be able to say “yes” or “no?” We look at the pros and cons.