If you visit a doctor virtually through a commercial app, the information you submit in the app could be used to promote a particular drug or service, says the leader of a new Canadian study involving industry insiders.
The industry insiders “were concerned that care might not be designed to be the best care for patients, but rather might be designed to increase uptake of the drug or vaccine to meet the pharmaceutical company objectives,” said Dr. Sheryl Spithoff, a physician and scientist at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto.
But the study’s researchers and others who work in the medical field have raised concerns that some virtual care companies aren’t adequately protecting patients’ private health information from being used by drug companies and shared with third parties that want to market products and services.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It’s estimated that more than one in five adults in Canada — or 6.5 million people — don’t have a family physician or nurse practitioner they can see regularly, and virtual care is helping to fill the void.
Spithoff co-authored the study in this week’s BMJ Open, based on interviews with 18 individuals employed or affiliated with the Canadian virtual care industry between October 2021 and January 2022.
“All of this is happening because of a business model that sees value in collecting that data and using it in a variety of ways that have little to do with patient care and more to do in building up the assets of that company,” Herder said.
Other industry insiders were concerned about how data, such as browsing information, might be shared with third parties such as Google and Meta, the owner of Facebook, for marketing purposes, Spithoff said.
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada, which funded the study, said in an email that health professionals conduct commercial activities, and therefore the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act applies.
Tara Sampalli, senior scientific director at Nova Scotia Health Innovation Hub, said the province’s contract with Maple means residents’ data can’t be used in other ways, such as by third-party providers.
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