Ever heard of JASON?
As reported in “Future Care,” JASON is an anonymous group that has been working on U.S. Department of Defense projects. It recently released two reports commissioned by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) on health IT. The first is “A Robust Health Data Infrastructure,” and the second is “Data for Individual Health.” These seem tame enough as the group grapples with a system focused on health of individuals rather than care of individuals. But consider that “In extending the ideas of the JASON-proposed architecture to the broader realm of health, it will become necessary to greatly expand the types of data that can be ingested and analyzed.” Here they are talking about harvesting data from social and other media. While one can see the obvious benefits that JASON is looking at, this exercise poses questions on privacy and security issues which stand in the way. Stay tuned for more debate on this topic.