Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Hide from the Digital World--At Your Own Risk
The American Medical Association's trade newsletter had an interesting, if troubling story about a recent rise in medical identity theft--and the major health conditions that can arise from having the wrong information in a permanent digital record. While mistaken medical information offers one scary type of error we'll make with data mining, I think the bigger risk is from using proxies for identity--such as Facebook profiles--to make unwarranted and potentially catastrophic conclusions.
As the AMA newsletter notes, medical identity theft is the fastest growing category of identity theft in the United States.
Blank cited the slow economy and more people losing insurance as drivers behind increasing medical identity theft.
Larry Ponemon, president and founder of the Ponemon Institute, a privacy research center based in Traverse City, Mich., said his research has found nearly half of medical ID thefts are considered "Robin Hood crimes." That means willing or sympathetic "victims" lend their identity to someone else so that person may get needed services…
Pam Dixon, founder of the World Privacy Forum, said in a 2006 report that "medical identity theft may also harm its victims by creating false entries in their health records at hospitals, doctors' offices, pharmacies and insurance companies." She said the changes to the records could remain in the files for many years.
"Victims of medical identity theft may receive the wrong medical treatment, find their health insurance exhausted, and could become uninsurable for both life and health insurance coverage," Dixon said in the report. One example Dixon cited in her report was a woman who ended up with the wrong blood type in her patient file.
As medical records become more transportable through electronic networks, the problem could be exacerbated as mistakes are disseminated and re-disseminated among physicians, hospitals, pharmacies and insurers, Dixon wrote.
In other words, mistaken medical identities are likely going to be a lot more common in the future. And the impacts aren't trivial--having an inaccurate, permanent record can lead to things like death--if you get the wrong blood, say.
Put differently, we run the risk of some really catastrophic problems--if we take too many past bits of data for granted.
I highlighted this problem a few months ago, when looking at efforts to use Facebook profiles to prosecute fraud. Fraud investigators have recently begun using photos of, say, someone on disability insurance looking happy and active as evidence of fraud--when, of course, it may every well be the first time the person has gotten out of the house in six months and they want to post some pictures to celebrate with friends.
This potential for misinterpreting the meaning behind our digital trails is likely to get a lot worse in the next decade--as clever researchers develop increasingly unlikely tools, such as language use and social connections , for teasing out likely elements of our personal lives from data streams.
It's the sort of research--analyzing proxies for our identity, such as our personal photos to our social connections--that will yield some of the most unexpected insights to improve health and well-being, as we continue to move into a world where almost everything is digital. What will be key to remember, however, is that while almost everything will be digital, not everything will be. In many instances, what we want to keep private--such as a family history of a debilitating disease--will be a lot harder to find than most things that are far less personal.
The broader point, it seems to me, is that we already live in a world where large-scale organizations--such as credit reporting agencies--collect and create representations of our identities behind our backs. Over the next decade, the impact of one of these identities misrepresenting material facts--such as blood type--could literally kill people.
It's easy to suggest that we need better tools to control our digital identities and privacy--and of course, we do. But there's a bigger, more difficult challenge here: We're moving toward a world where our identities will be meticulously, almost frighteningly digital. If we're going to thrive in that world, we need to create conditions that make it possible for people to feel comfortable being open and transparent.