Category: Data and Health
Marketing is fuzzy – when it comes to using customer’s data.
My mom at the time was rocking 70. She recently had a check up that required a followup visit to a cancer doctor. The test were negative and she left the offices in good spirits. The next day she received a formal invitation from the same hospital group inviting her to join ‘the cancer support groups for those living with the illness.’ She went into a complete panic.
Did the doctor give her the wrong results? Does the support group know more about her health condition than she does?
Although the 2 events were completely unrelated, as far as the hospital marketing policies were concerned. Her visit to the doctor wasn’t the trigger to for the invitation for the support group. It was the fact she was a recent customer of the hospital group that triggered the invitation for the support group. Very fuzzy logic (the chicken or the egg).
But for a 70 yr women, who lost her mother to cancer, it didn’t feel like two unrelated events.
When she went in for her test, she ‘signed’ into the hospital. She agreed to receive marketing information from the hospital and other other fuzzy marketing efforts.
We are all familiar with HIPAA laws or at least the form we fill out at a doctor’s office. They protect your test/results from being shared, not the fact you are customer of a hospital that specializes in (pick your medicine).
Standard terms and conditions for doctors and medical facilities:
We may use your medical information when conducting research projects, fundraising events and marketing campaigns, throughout the health system. We or our affiliates may also send out fundraising communications about our fundraising efforts to solicit your support.
If you wish to opt-out of these activities, you have the right to request to do so in writing.
What is reasonable marketing material and the data to support the content of that marketing material? What responsibility does an organization have to use the collected personal data (in this case) respectable way.
FYI – No HIPAA laws were broken in my mom’s case.
the Privacy & Security Rule under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) provides clear standards for protecting and securing patient information, while allowing the flow of necessary information for patient care and other important purposes.
What is Big Data?
I’ve been working with customer data for over 20 years now. I’ve seen good data, bad data, black data, red data, big data and bigger data.
Big data is not lots and lots of data; well actually it sort of is, but that not all it is.
Big data has 3 components. These three components must provide value and insight to the user.
Let me explain…
A group of data programming geeks were consulting on site for a large airplane manufacture. They were creating a large data warehouse to store all sorts of details about a planes engine, parts and maintenance details. Each part was to be tracked and available for complex queries. It is big data but it is not Big Data, yet.
A lot of information is collected regarding an aircraft. Mandatory maintenance schedules and updates are recorded. All maintenance (scheduled or unscheduled) must be recorded, commercial and private. This is not a requirement for cars/trucks; cars don’t fall from the sky, yet.
Side Note: Should autonomous cars have mandatory maintenance schedule to be used? Like an aircraft? For example a check point for the vehicle may be required to be road worthy a scheduled intervals.
With tons of data being entered into storage, where to you begin? This is new data to the user, there needs to be exploration to find new patterns that provide insight to decision making. Add lots of information together, so that it is accessible to ask ‘what if’, ‘when if’, ‘why if’… and answering that question is BIG DATA
The geeks, analysts, programmers had already defined that an unscheduled repair is 1000x more costly than a scheduled repair. A well known statistic in transportation. What what can you do about it? How do you find new scheduled repairs that prevent costly unscheduled repairs? Using the data to define benefit or advantage is BIG DATA.
BTW – you don’ t need lots of data to have Big Data. Just Big Value.
Weather forecasts are a user of Big Data. The weather data points have been recorded for centuries. We have applied analytics to this data to create weather forecasts (aka predictive analytics). Weather forecast are a result of Big Data – using history to find patterns to forecast the weather.
Big Data can come from all sorts of sources.
You can see from the chart below ‘every minute of the day’, we as individuals create tons of social data every time we use social apps.
Data is not just created by website searches; is also also created every-time we take a digital picture, a doctor scans a patient on digital film, or a Fitbit collecting steps. This is new data that didn’t exist so long ago.
Side Note: There were pedometers when I was a child. They measured your steps the same way, by movement. Today ‘Fitbits’ are a rebirth of an old tool. The ability to report and share your metrics changed the industry.
If you are digital health geek, you create your own Big Data. Tracking your vitals, exercise, food intake and sleep patterns, gives you insight into goals.
How many times has YOUR DIGITAL DATA been exposed?
The New York Times: How many times has your personal information been exposed to hackers?
The NYT has put together an interactive assessment tool to highlight a problem that a reader may only passively consume.
- Participants answer a series of questions about jobs they’ve applied for, online services they’ve signed up for, who their health insurance providers have been, and at which retailers they’ve used credit or debit cards.
- As they do that, the assessment tool dynamically updates a tally of how many times different pieces of the participant’s personal information have been exposed to hackers.
It makes the story come alive — and makes it very personal to each reader.
- At the end of the assessment, The New York Times gives you links to both the stories they’ve published on each individual hacking and, more importantly, links to the announcements from the companies that were hacked, which often include remediation options for those affected.