Big Data, Health Law, and Bioethics: Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

When data from all aspects of our lives can be relevant to our health - from our habits at the grocery store and our Google searches to our FitBit data and our medical records - can we really differentiate between big data and health big data? Will health big data be used for good, such as to improve drug safety, or ill, as in insurance discrimination? Will it disrupt health care (and the health care system) as we know it? Will it be possible to protect our health privacy? What barriers will there be to collecting and utilizing health big data? What role should law play, and what ethical concerns may arise? This timely, groundbreaking volume explores these questions and more from a variety of perspectives, examining how law promotes or discourages the use of big data in the health care sphere, and also what we can learn from other sectors. This document contains the Introduction to the book, which also summarizes all the chapters in the volume.

Keywords: big data, predictive analytics, machine learning, health care, privacy, pharmacovigilance, discrimination, Internet of Things, IoT, Informed Consent, Patents, Intellectual Property, Ownership

JEL Classification: I100, I1, I10, I11, I14, I18, I31, K11, K13, K20, K32

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Cohen, I. Glenn and Lynch, Holly Fernandez and Vayena, Effy and Gasser, Urs, Big Data, Health Law, and Bioethics: Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2018) (March 22, 2018). Big Data, Health Law, and Bioethics (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Berkman Center Research Publication No. 2018-3, Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 18-18, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3147243 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3147243