They Know From Records You Buy Viagra and Want to Sell You More
This article by Jordan Robertson and Shannon Pettypiece for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
Still, a prescription for, say, Viagra or Prozac isn’t the same as a grocery receipt, and as drug matchbacks become better understood, they’re raising concerns among patients about medical information available on the Web.
“Just because something’s legal doesn’t mean morally that it’s right,” said Aaron Laxton, a 35-year-old social worker from Saint Louis, Missouri who was diagnosed with HIV three years ago.
Laxton, who has chronicled his post-diagnosis journey in a series of YouTube videos, said he is not surprised to see ads for new HIV medications as he travels the Web, but worries that he may be the target of a more subtle form of profiling, based on knowledge of his medical records. He said he is routinely shown banner ads for sleeping pills -- a type of drug he has long taken yet rarely discusses or researches on the Internet.
“It’s this uncanny sense of, is this computer reading my mind?” he said. “It’s almost as if the computer pops up the ad even before the thought pops in your head.”
Most of us will be familiar with how ads seem to crop up for weeks after we visit a new site for the first time. This type of surveillance is why companies have to post their cookie policy at top of the page for every user and is how companies like Google and Facebook generate income. The difference with matchbacks is that we don’t get the choice or even the opportunity to question whether pharmacy bills are being shared with big data firms.
Big data represents big business.
IMS Healthcare IPOed in April. It found support in the region of $24 from early November and a sustained move below that level would be required to question medium-term scope for continued higher to lateral ranging.
Nielsen NV is not specifically related to healthcare but performs the same type of intelligence operations on other sectors. The share broke below the 200-day MA in October and countermanded yesterday’s impressive upward dynamic today to suggest resistance in the region of the trend mean. It will need to hold the current level if potential for a failed upside break is to be negated.
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