Medical Quack

Medical Quack “GoFundMe” Outreach Personal Crowd Fundraising For Medical And Funeral Bills- Mother Passed Away From Cancer

2013-05-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

Nobody is immune from needing help and my cause is two fold here with both keeping the Medical Quack alive and well and to also look for a little help for some family medical bills. Mom had surgery and died about 4 weeks afterwards. I’m glad I was there during her surgery as I was not able to be there at the end. I miss her a lot. Hospice took good care of her through the end and if you ever need a great service as such in Phoenix, it’s called “Hospice of the Valley”, the best. For the next couple of weeks I may have some time to post a couple here and there but it will be light and not the normal amount of blog posts, and for a few days there may not be any new blog posts so bear with me and keep coming back. Thanks to all who take time to read the Medical Quack and I do hope I provide some value information. Barbara Duck

GoFundMe did not ask me to do this post or campaign and I thought I should mention that as this is my own person effort here, but again by publicizing the site it may also offer answers for others too.

I felt funny about putting this out there but you know what, Hollywood actresses are using it to help fund their cancer treatments too. Here’s an article on Karen Black with her cause.

We don’t have as much expense as she does but we are in the same boat with Mom. Kate Bornstein is another cause and then there’s the little folks like me with small goals by comparison so if you can I appreciate it and will keep the Medical Quack going to hopefully keep information flowing.

Also there are victims from the Boston bomb incident that can maybe use a little help as well, one example here…Bucks for Bauman He was injured in the bomb blast.

Thank you so much

Other similar crowd funding sites below to check out for fund raising..

http://www.giveforward.com/

http://www.youcaring.com/

https://fundrazr.com/

https://rally.org/

http://fundly.com/pricing/

http://humantribeproject.com/

Tenet Healthcare Loses $88 Million First Quarter 2013–Admissions Drop, Algorithmic Models Of Insurers Transferring Risk to Patients and Providers Not Working, Why? No Money

2013-05-01T09:44:00.001-07:00

Revenues were up but profits were down. More people have high deductible insurance plans and thus this model is continuing to break as payers are transferring risk to patients and providers. The problem here is that transferring risk in software analytics may look good but we are back to how this doesn’t work in the real world as patients and payers don’t have the money, as we have already algorithmically risked down to the penny so where’s the next math model going to go search? What’s left? Again what looks good in the software world doesn’t play out the same in the real world, especially in healthcare, the people business. In short, the models lied as they were constructed to generate profits and at some point in time when the array of data used runs out of cash, you can’t model it any more as it bottoms out. I think this is what we are now seeing.

Not ObamaCare That is Failing, It’s the Models and Subsequent Algorithms that Execute Within IT Infrastructures Intersecting, Changing And Conflicting– The Affordable “Complexities” Act…

Furthermore this is shown with others not being able to work with the business models as shown even with Medicare and CMS being frustrated. We have had a few years of all of this in the news and now the reality is starting to hit. Insurers have worked models to death and we get duped on some of this and believe all the numbers and reports shown to us and when it bottoms out, well time to look at models generated for profit without looking and coordinating with “patient care” models on the other side. Government is pretty stuck as well as talent lacks on that side to first maybe admit this is an issue and secondly they didn’t hire the right talent as we stick to the OMG news and emotional turmoil, just read the news. We have a Consumer Financial Protection Agency that’s been rendered pretty useless as well with the wrong man in the wrong job, he’s a lawyer and is also easily duped as he’s sucked in as well and offers little knowledge and challenge when it comes to business models and the current course of action is reactionary rather than understanding models and being pro-active.

Richard Cordray, Fail With Understanding Flawed Models and Algorithms -Big Case of“Algo Duping”With Big Data-Save Time, Hire Quants Who Know How Consumer Financial Models Are Built and Function…Geez

This is a good article too about duping and see if you are in fact driving yourself off the cliff and see examples of companies driving themselves off as well.

Big Data Revolution-Dangers of Using It To Drive Ourselves Off a Cliff -Debunking Myths of Algorithms Replacing Humans In Decision Making Processes in the Healthcare Business (Video)

Sure the next quarter may bring in some new numbers but there’s a certain amount of “fixed” expenses that hospitals can’t adjust and now the fiction of some of the analytics used is starting to show. Scroll down and watch the videos in the footer of this blog for some really good educational videos that help explain the roots of all of this and how it got started. It’s kind of like the same models that lead to the stock market crash. If you’re an algorithm, life is looking pretty good, but can’t say the same for the human side”.

Right now we have BigData being the so called salvation and it’s not going to be the answer when the dollars bottom out unless we figure out how to use a software program like bitcoin to generate another fantasy money system. Bitcoin is ok for what it is but we still need to look at hard dollars and it’s not going to save us from what has been created and half of the analytics being created today will be a waste of time as we tend to keep following the same circle here and look at numbers with not enough regard t how it plays out in the real world.

There’s yet another big issue brewing too with our data and that is due to the fact that it relies to heavily on selling consumer data and that too will break in time as the date becomes more flawed, we have more exposure to breaches as more of our data is stored in more places where we don’t have a clue on the security. An example below talks about this and there are tons of examples out there but again the data selling epidemic model contributes in a large way too. Companies making consumer devices are not showing huge profits from selling the devices, they make big profits selling the data and the devices while they may help consumers with care, they really end up being a device that makes money by selling data, not as a device itself sold and being able to stand on it’s own to generate revenue, so big portions of this industry have flawed model as well as it feeds the frenzy.

Jawbone Buys BodyMedia. Launches New “Up App” Platform–Partnerships Allow for More of Your Data and Profiles To Be Sold As Data Selling Epidemic Continues to Grow

I think the picture is going to get a lot uglier as time moves on and the algorithms run and right now some are out of control and the translation for some of it is something like this: Unintended consequences are the results with code that runs, collides and moves money as each profit center executes what they need with little regard or notice to how it reacts with other data.

There’s a lot of neat and cool things going on in science right now too and that has an impact as well and items such as telemedicine will generate savings but I do have to laugh at the numbers that are thrown out there as we really don’t know how much and all of those reports are just guesses as you have to wait until that algorithm comes running out of left field and changes the game, what we live with every day. Sure trending offers good insight and has value for sure but what they do with the data and how it gets translated is where the murky water starts.

Check out the Algo Duping/Killer Algorithm page if you want to see some examples on how we all get duped and plan on some time to watch the videos and you will get the idea of the processes as it’s a hard thing for consumers and others to get your head around as it’s all intangible analytics that affect what we can and can’t do in the tangible world. Again the formulas and math can and do clash with the real world so maybe time to give this a little more thought in business? It sounds good to me but I’m only one person and it takes maturity and a sense of realism instead of the rush for profit to make it work. You can’t take conflicting models and push them together and think you will have success as it’s a battle of the profit algorithms right now. Hospitals are tangibles and provide “human” services and there’s no way they can compete with the sometimes fantasy projections of other entities. As I said a while back banks and insurance companies are really not much more than software companies that control a lot of money and move it for profit. As long as they are in control and write the code for profit with fantasy numbers we are pretty much stuck as it is modeled for inequality and dead patients can’t be re-admitted.

Below is my take on the Baucus “train wreck”, it’s a technology problem. BD

Baucus “Train Wreck” Is a Technology Issue, In Other Words We Have a “Model Train” Problem Embedded With Code and Algorithms Colliding For Profit Versus Functionality And Standards

DALLAS • Tenet Healthcare Corp. said Tuesday that it lost $88 million in the first quarter, hurt by hefty charges and a drop in inpatient admissions.

The earnings beat Wall Street predictions, while revenue fell slightly short.

The Dallas-based hospital operator’s loss attributable to common shareholders amounted to 85 cents per share and contrasted with net income of $58 million, or 53 cents per share, in the same quarter of 2012.

Excluding impairments, restructuring charges, acquisition-related costs and a debt-related loss, the company said it posted adjusted earnings from continuing operations of 33 cents per share.

http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/tenet-healthcare-posts-m-q-loss/article_a3b074a2-6bf8-5708-99b1-2cbd97cfee91.html

How to Help a Family or Loved One In Need CauseWish CrowdFunding (Guest Post)

2013-04-30T20:34:00.001-07:00

This is a guest post from the owner of CauseWish, a crowd funding website and if you look on my right hand side you can see mine cause I have set up with another site. Mine is for help with medical bills and funeral expenses as my mother just died of cancer. I helped spread the word of GoFundMe and here’s another site to consider for Crowdfunding, CauseWish.

Medical Quack “GoFundMe” Outreach Personal Crowd Fundraising For Medical And Funeral Bills- Mother Passed Away From Cancer

Sandip Sekhon is the owner of CauseWish and wrote to me asking for a post and of course if you read here you know I’m always trying to pass good information along to help all. Below is his information and links to the site and he does include funerals under his site for funding too. If you watched the money raised for the victims in Boston then you might have an idea on how this works. Today sties such as these are more important than ever as inequality continues to grow in the US as banks and corporations have modeled it that way sadly. Here’s the information from CauseWish and the post from the owner of the site and I hope it proves to be useful to those who read here. BD

How to Help a Family or Loved One In Need

When you see a family or loved one in need one of the first questions you might ask is “Can I do anything to help?” And if part of their ‘need’ involves financial expenses, as would be the case during the medical challenge or the passing of a loved one, there is something very significant you can do.

You could create an online fundraising page to benefit the individual or family. Websites such as medical fundraising website CauseWish specialize in these types of online fundraising campaigns.

Before starting out, use your judgment to decide if you should get approval from the beneficiary beforehand. If they are clearly facing significant financial difficulties then it’s most likely that any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated. However, if the cause is very sensitive it’s worth mentioning the fundraiser to them and simply letting them know that loved ones are coming together to raise money.

Fundraising for loved ones is extremely helpful. Not only because of the money raised, but also because you’ll be putting in your time and effort into starting, promoting and managing the campaign. Something that is hard to do when someone is going through a difficult time.

Furthermore, the words of love and encouragement provide that much needed support.

When creating your fundraising page, make sure you tell donors who you are and exactly how you’re related to the beneficiary. Also, explain when the funds will be transferred across. Naturally, those who don’t know you and come across the fundraising page might feel wary about donating – you need to help alleviate these concerns.

If possible, during the fundraising campaign get updates from the beneficiary and share these on the page. That’ll create more of a personal connection with donors and increase the chances that others will contribute too.

Finally, in addition to fundraising to alleviate the financial burden, think of what else you and others might be able to do to help the family or loved one in need. Here are some other ideas:

· Simply spend more time with them. Just being there can make a big difference.

· Run errands and take care of other day-to-day duties. This will help them to focus on healing.

· Rally other friends and family members together so that when you’re not available, others are.

· Help organize or set an action plan for them to progress. For example, if they’re going through a medical challenge research the best treatment options and hospitals.

I hope this provides you with a good action plan for helping a loved one in need.

Do you have any other ideas on how to help someone facing a medical or related challenge? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Former Goldman Programmer Still on the Hook for Code Theft, Perhaps Is It Time to Talk About the Model He Was Writing Code For To Finally Figure Out If That Code Had “Real” Value?

2013-04-30T17:40:00.001-07:00

There’s been a lot of talk and especially here at this blog about the “models” that are used for software. The Quants are at the top of the ladder here with having the talent to create the models and then the programmers follow up with creating the software and code that is used to execute the mathematical models. I have not seen or heard much about what model he was programming for or exactly what area of their IT infrastructure he was in. There’s a good video that explains this with actual quants who model discuss how this works and another player who is programmer that want to be a quant. If you don’t understand this process it’s a great video and the only one I have found to where the layman can understand some of how the big banks and companies use math formulas to move money, as that’s what they do. The Quants video will fill you in and again it would be interesting to see what area he worked in with programming at Goldman. With Sergey Aleynikov you are dealing with a very intelligent person here and you really need a jury of “technologists’ to fairly hear the case in my opinion.

Sergey Aleynikov Files Suit Against Goldman Sachs For $2.4 Million to Recover Court Costs and Refuses New York State Plea Offer To Admit to Stealing Trading Computer Code

He did have his one case overturned by one judge who apparently has some technical understanding and knowledge. Again without knowing exactly what type of code was taken, and it could have been a lump of commonly used repetitive code that many companies use over and over as a component of the entire software program or web based website running the algorithms. This is why I ask that we perhaps inquire about what “model” was being used. You could throw a bunch of code in front of a non tech jury and they wouldn’t know the difference here.

Goldman Sachs Programmer Who Went to Jail for Stealing Code Has His Conviction Overturned–You Can’t Get A Jury of Peers Off the Street for Crimes With High Tech Algos

Modeling and coding is just beginning to come into the spot light with questions being asked and it’s a good thing as models and code run on servers 24/7 and make life impacting decisions about all of us. I for one would really like to know what kind of model he was coding for and I’m sure I’m not alone as I’m like everyone else who wants the truth and this “truth” is a lot more technical than most can understand. Actually in the modeling end of the business, the quants are getting a little nervous I guess for lack of a better word to describe as the functions they provide with models has changed so much over the last few years from efficiencies to models that make money. In short they want their jobs and don’t want to be in a position to where they have someone higher above advising use of a model that may not work or might be erroneous or just flat out lie. So again this could be a good time to open the full book to see the entire story.

Big Data–The Data Science Code of Ethics-Designed By Those Who Create Models - Don’t Fall Victim To Write Fictitious Code and Models Just to Make Money With Clients Demanding Such

Here’s a couple sample lines below of what I am talking about with a code of ethics so again in trying to figure out exactly what kind of code and the real value here it would be helpful to see what type of model he was perhaps programming for?

(b) A data scientist shall rate the quality of data and disclose such rating to client to enable client to make informed decisions. The data scientist understands that bad or uncertain data quality may compromise data science professional practice and may communicate a false reality or promote an illusion of understanding. The data scientist shall take reasonable measures to protect the client from relying and making decisions based on bad or uncertain data quality.

(d) If a data scientist reasonably believes a client is misusing data science to communicate a false reality or promote an illusion of understanding, the data scientist shall take reasonable remedial measures, including disclosure to the client, and including, if necessary, disclosure to the proper authorities. The data scientist shall take reasonable measures to persuade the client to use data science appropriately.”

As mentioned, this is far above the comprehension of any jury that does not have some technical knowledge…in other words…need specific peers if you will. After watching the PBS special “The Untouchables” and listening to DOJ Manny who displayed not one bit of confidence with crimes that involve software and models, this is what brings me to needing further attention in this case. I have seen it too many times to where people are “duped” into a story and they buy in and the real criminals that hire the talent walk. In addition, which this is a bit odd, but I agree with these Australian bankers too that half of the analytics purchased will be a waste of time and so many are still throwing code against the wall to see if it sticks with big data and trying their hands at modeling non linear data.

Half of Analytics Investments By Companies and Banks Will Be a Waste–What Do We Analyze with Big Data and Does It Have Value–Some Algo Fairies Would Do Better at Disneyland…

So what do you think? Are going to go the whole gambit here and dissect a Goldman model? Sure some are probably laughing and some might think this article belongs in the trash too, but at any rate, if the state is going to pursue this and “really” prove the value of the data he took since the feds have already over turned this, let’s dig up the models and see exactly what kind of Goldman Model he was programming for and see what the “real” value of the code is or was. Inquiring minds would like to know. More good videos on this topic are in the footer of this blog and most are where the layman can understand most of it or take a visit over to the Algo Duping page for a few more videos that help explain what’s going on here and let’s get a jury of programmers and quants to officially put this to bed and get the real truth! BD

(Reuters) - A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc computer programmer failed to win the dismissal of charges by Manhattan's district attorney of stealing secret trading code, despite having earlier had his federal conviction over the same activity thrown out.

In a decision made public on Tuesday, New York State Supreme Court Justice Ronald Zweibel said the former programmer, Sergey Aleynikov, did not show that the charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr amounted to double jeopardy, or were part of a "vindictive prosecution" justifying dismissal.

"We are in the process of reviewing the opinion, and are confident that Mr. Aleynikov will again be vindicated," Aleynikov's lawyer Kevin Marino said in a phone interview about the decision, which is dated April 5.

"Even assuming, as defendant does, that the timing of this indictment, coupled with the defendant's successful appeal of his federal court conviction, raises an inference that the prosecution may have been motivated for vindictive reasons, these factors along do not create a presumption of vindictiveness," Zweibel wrote.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/30/us-goldman-aleynikov-idUSBRE93T16E20130430?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews

MMRGlobal and Chinese EMR to Integrate MyMedicalRecords PHR Using HL7 Technologies

2013-04-30T15:45:00.001-07:00

It sounds very similar to what is occurring here in the US and as the press release below notes the original contract was just to sell the MyMedicalRecords PHR in China and now the integration of both will happen with Unis-Tonghe licensing the technology using HL7 standards. The EMR system will populate the PHR system to include doctor’s notes, which we don’t always get all the records here in the US in our PHR. That’s a discussion for another day and has been on this blog before too. The company is also releasing their first HL7 connection with EHR company 4Medica in the US.

MyMedicalRecord PHR To Begin Offering HL7 Connections to Connect/Interchange With EHRs and EMRs And Push PDF Documents In April

In addition the company has licensing agreements with 4Medica, Interbit Data and a few others while patent complaints continue with Walgreens and WebMD and several other large organizations. I have a back link to the listing of the MMR Global patents here on a back link. BD

LOS ANGELES, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/30/13 -- MMRGlobal, Inc. (OTCQB: MMRF) ("MMR") and Unis-Tonghe Technology (Zhengzhou) Co., Ltd. ("UNIS") today announced that the two companies will begin offering an Electronic Medical Records ("EMR") system with an integrated MyMedicalRecords Personal Health Record ("PHR") to be sold through the two companies previously announced Joint Venture, Unis Tonghe MMR International Health Management Service Co., Ltd. ("UNIS/MMR"). MMR will begin building the first integrated version of the system in the U.S. working with licensees and existing strategic business partners. The platform will utilize MMR's patented PHR systems to offer two-way connectivity with any EMR or EHR system in hospitals and other ambulatory care centers. The system will also use an integrated HL7 interface to populate data from the UNIS/MMR system directly to patients through their PHR including chart notes, lab test results, medication lists and other discrete protected patient data. The Joint Venture was formally submitted for approval to the Chinese government in 2011 to operate in China through 2042.

The primary focus of meetings between Luo Jianhui, Unisoft Group/Unis-Tonghe Technology Vice President and Chairman, and Robert H. Lorsch, MMRGlobal CEO, taking place in Los Angeles Sunday through today, was to discuss offering the turnkey solution in the Asia Pacific region using MMR's patented technologies to integrate with a the UNIS/MMR platform. This enables the venture to offer services in Asia Pacific countries where MMR holds existing patents on its medical records systems IP. According to Mr. Lorsch, "The Joint Venture was originally formed to only sell MMR's patented Personal Health Record technologies under license to the JV. The plan was for the JV to sell the UNIS/MMR products and services to hospitals, physician groups and consumers in China. However, at this time both sides see a benefit in delivering a total turnkey system which includes MMR PHRs integrated into the system. As the health Information technology market in China continues to evolve, we are preparing to offer a comprehensive solution to the market."

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=178404&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1812939&highlight=

FDA Approves Plan B One Step Contraceptive Without a Prescription for Women 15 Years or Older Honoring the Original Teva Application as Legal Ruling in April Opened the Door

2013-04-30T15:13:00.001-07:00

You may or may not remember how this one went down but HHS Secretary Sebelius decided to step in here and over rule the FDA but then a judge over ruled her. It was political and just a weird thing the way she played it out publicly I thought as the FDA works for HHS and that was in poor taste but the judge said it better than anyone else when he reversed that decision.

“Judge Korman also raised the issue of politics, saying that Ms. Sebelius’s decision was “politically motivated, scientifically unjustified, and contrary to agency precedent.” “

Judge Orders Morning After Pill to be Available for All Ages, Thus Nullifying HHS 2011 Recommendation to Restrict That Countered FDA Recommended Approval–Science Prevails

I had my comments too back in 2009 and probably more than me are getting a little more critical these days as that GOP thing seems to be spreading to the DOJ too with some of what I am reading in the news today too. The link below is one which many commented on who have tech backgrounds and found it odd, and again in my opinion showed a bit of lack of knowledge here with what technology can do, hospitals and doctors learned to bill better and then the following month we had the big announcement of the record amounts of money recouped with fraud efforts…folks that have no hands on with some area of technology themselves say silly things and run scared as data mechanics knowledge goes a long ways with more than just knowledge, you think more logically too. Did that to me.

HHS and DOJ Send Letters to Hospital Trade Associations Warning of Gaming Billing System Via Use of Electronic Medical Records–Hospitals Just Learned How to Bill Better & Hired Consultants–Case of Being Algo Duped With Numbers?

So Teva let their application stand as filed and who know what the next approval might be with age limits…the judge opened the door. BD

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced that it has approved an amended application submitted by Teva Women’s Health, Inc. to market Plan B One-Step (active ingredient levonorgestrel) for use without a prescription by women 15 years of age and older.
After the FDA did not approve Teva’s application to make Plan B One-Step available over-the-counter for all females of reproductive age in December 2011, the company submitted an amended application to make the product available for women 15 years of age and older without a prescription.
The product will now be labeled “not for sale to those under 15 years of age *proof of age required* not for sale where age cannot be verified.” Plan B One-Step will be packaged with a product code prompting a cashier to request and verify the customer’s age. A customer who cannot provide age verification will not be able to purchase the product. In addition, Teva has arranged to have a security tag placed on all product cartons to prevent theft.

http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm350230.htm

Jawbone Buys BodyMedia. Launches New “Up App” Platform–Partnerships Allow for More of Your Data and Profiles To Be Sold As Data Selling Epidemic Continues to Grow

2013-04-30T10:49:00.001-07:00

All of these tracking devices are nice and offer a lot of information. I look at the practical side here from a couple views. I see people buying them and using for a while but then it also seems like there’s a period to where the “novelty” wears off too, in other words used it for a while and then people are so busy today with other items and keeping up with analytics and other software items that they just put it aside. Use it for a while and then it gets put away. We do that with a lot of things we buy though, not just tracking devices and there’s so many out there. I have heard this a lot with Fitbit. A consumer uses it for a while and then they get tired of it, bored with it or flat out just don’t use it anymore for other reasons.

In the privacy area it’s really just kind of too bad that this entire industry model was built and evolves around selling your data or data profiles. This model has been around for quite a while, since devices with web connections started and I have covered that here, again in my advocacy for the consumer to let people know how this all works so they can make a decision and are informed all the way around about their data.

I spoke from the beginning that to have such devices connect without a web app to a non tethered PHR would be great, that way the consumer has their data and can make a decision on what they want to share instead of being “up for sale” just by using a device. Here’s a flash back to 2009 below where I spoke about this, so here we are 4 years later and the data collection and selling has become even more profitable and luring. I basically said the same thing back then, look around for a device that doesn’t have a “date selling web app or site” attached to it so you are in control. Those are getting harder to find today too, as everyone wants to make a buck on data.

Fitbit Wireless Device Monitors your Daily Activity and Movements Released

This is further evidenced here with activities as such with both medical device and consumer device companies joining health insurance trade groups as we all know that’s where the the big fear is today as health insurance companies want every stick of data they can get about you and how they use it and it’s accuracy is the big question.

Medical Device Companies Joining America’s Health Insurance Plans Trade Association (Lobbyists), Affiliations Allow for More Data Selling Between Both Entities–The Epidemic Continues to Grow

Red Brick is another company that has Target as a big account that gives out some type of benefit for those employees who use tracking devices and I said the same thing there as well. Red Brick uses Ingenix analytics (a division of United Healthcare now called Optum) for a lot of their Health IT analytics. See there you go with a connection to an insurance subsidiary that you didn’t know existed so again with all the data out there, how and does a subsidiary report it back to another subsidiary, like a wellness group and how does this float over to the health insurance area? Good questions right? We know that United is very interested in devices as they have their own cheap hearing aid business going and I have had posts to where that has been used to lure seniors at times with getting basically a “free” one if they enroll and take out a policy and then they have other owned entities too with biometrics.

The case in point here I’m making are the ties to insurance companies if not directly then via subsidiaries that collect, mine and analyze data. We read all the time today about complexities in business models this is it right here where subsidiaries can function in areas where a corporate or other owned entity can’t but what happens with the data, only the shadow knows as nobody tracks any of this and government is bliss. Billions and billions of easy profits are made selling data. I found this article interesting of late to where Blue Cross and United were named as they are buying your MasterCard and Visa records from the banks, see they are all in on the profits. When confronted Blue Cross stated they were mining the data to see if any of their members were buying clothes a size larger. I don’t know about you but weight and obesity are pretty visible and you don’t find humans being able to hide it very well, plus claims have your weight and other related information there too, so pretty weak reasoning if you ask me.

Insurance Companies Are Buying Up Consumer Spending Data-Time is Here to License and Tax the Data Sellers-As Insurers Sell Tons of Data, Gets Flawed Data When Data Buyers Uses Out of Context Too

What they do have let’s say are records of where you buy your gas, where you buy your clothes and yes by chance did this consumer buy a Fitbit or any other device that sends data? Think about it for a moment and browse through the want ads and see what kind of jobs insurance companies are looking to fill, there are numerous data mining, analytics and other related types of jobs out there in big numbers, again an observation and connecting some dots as to what’s going on in the real world, public information. Like I keep saying this is a data selling “epidemic” as non linear methodologies are being explored to find that one tiny connection that might be there. If you want to learn more about how some of this works I have a page with videos created by folks smarter than me that explain this and it fits both the financial world as well as healthcare as both are connected at the hip anyway today, so read up on Algo Duping and watch the videos when you have time.

As a matter of fact I made a post that was somewhat satire about data addiction and abuse being the next upcoming 12 step program too back in 2009 and well what do you think? Are we about there:) I revisited this and another topic after the Madoff case and the total embarrassment of the SEC with not being up to date with technology and not even knowing how to talk about looking at whistle blower material that was given to them. I said we need a Department of Algorithms as way in 2009 I could see the corruption developing and I’m not that smart and anyone in technology can see the same thing but I guess I might be a lone person who talks about it in a way the layman can understand. It’s out there alright and I’m just connecting dots.

Does the US Government Need a Department of Modeling and Algorithms–Is Data Addiction and Abuse the Next Up and Coming 12 Step Program, Some Classic Posts & Topics Revisited

Here’s an example of someone saying it so many words too, company and bank algorithms are becoming law and the government has not a clue or maybe lacks the intelligence to pay attention? I keep saying Congress needs to re-institute the Office of Technology Assessment and agree with the Sunshine Foundation because I have never seen such a lost group in my life and it scares me to see some of their reasoning as it’s just so off base and not in touch with reality at all and they waste time with women’s health issues as that’s about the highest level of comprehension I guess we can see and it makes great OMG media, which is a farce of sorts.

So coming back around you have proprietary algorithms running these devices and their data and the news announcement says they are going to expand upon it too. It’s the data folks for profit. I just looked around the BodyMedia page and noticed on the partner page, Walgreens. According to their 2010 SEC statement they made short of $800 million selling data, so what’s that tell you? They have been selling prescription data like all other drug stores and PBMS for years but now they get your purchase information and could query that with your other purchases, they could sell that to a device company like these, or these folks could sell it to them, it’s going on like crazy out there and you have no clue as you can never find a “privacy statement” that you can understand. It’s those complexities that everyone talks about in the news that make money, so here you go, prime example. I’m sure I’ll make no friends pointing this out but it is what it is and you can make your own educated choice with devices. That’s the way it should be.

There’s a lot of patents involved here too and I’m going into that discussion today as that’s a whole different topic. I looked at the Jawbone privacy page too and in so many complicated words they are telling you they are selling data. Again it’s written by an attorney I would guess and so here we go again with disclosures for consumers. You are not going to get much either from the Consumer Financial Protection Agency either as you have the wrong man for the job stumbling around and creating a huge data base to study as he doesn’t have any hands on and has no clue. This is not a personal attack on him at all, just wrong person with the skills to see what is really happening, he’s duped too and thinks that building a big data base might make him look like he’s doing something which he is, but go to talk to the people that build the models and they can tell him exactly how this works and how consumers interact with the software, duh? The algorithms are set to execute and with choices made they put out the data, what’s so difficult about this? Again the folks that build it know and it’s not going to vary much as algorithms do as they are programmed, it’s not a human.

Richard Cordray, Fail With Understanding Flawed Models and Algorithms -Big Case of“Algo Duping”With Big Data-Save Time, Hire Quants Who Know How Consumer Financial Models Are Built and Function…Geez

Gizmodo did a good article too not too long ago on the data sellers and they focus on some of the same items too. The New York Times this week did an article too and what you find is that you get the information in story fashion, which is good as that’s what journalists do and I commented further on it and you can read that at the link below. I don’t really tell stories just prefer to get right to the bottom line on how it affects you. How did that data get out there, you were sold, sold and sold again. Also worth mentioning when data is queried with other data and stored on servers, what’s their security? We don’t know so with all of this you now have a bigger exposure to breaches too, no brain surgeon to figure that one out as the more that’s out there, more to be hacked.

Data Floating Around the Web and You Don’t Know How It Got There? Time to License and Excise Tax Data Sellers–Identify “Flawed Data” Epidemic At The Root of the Problem

The amount of flawed data is growing too so the data selling epidemic creates issues here too as once a flawed piece of data is sold and sold, it’s all over the place and while banks and big companies profit in the billions here, when they mess up, who gets to take time on their own dime to fix it, us, the consumers so they get free labor in essence there as well as we are all guilty with the data selling game. Again I’m just pointing out to help educate folks on what goes on so it’s your decision with devices and so you know up front that your data or profile will be sold and queried, it is what it is and then you get marketed to death! I expect a ton of it with my blog as yes I get tons and sift through the garbage but just be aware too that your opening a door for some of this yourself. Here’s where this is attacking seniors too with all of this.

I found one good video that included corporate IT and tech folks sitting around an discussing what they are doing to find value with big data, and they don’t know and throwing stuff against the wall. (link below) When you hear the folks from NASA and T-Mobile talking here it adds credibility to the unknowns with a lot of data and of course the marketing tells you “all of it has value” which it does not so here we are trying to figure out if it has value and if on the other side we are falling into a data selling routine as analytics can and do use analytics out of context to make money. I had an exchange of information with an incognito banker who agrees with me on a lot of this and the fact that banks and health insurance companies are pretty just software companies that have models and algorithms that move a lot of money, in their directions:)

Big Data/Analytics If Used Out of Context and Without True Values Stand To Be A Huge Discriminatory Practice Against Consumers–More Honest Data Scientists Needed to Formulate Accuracy/Value To Keep Algo Duping For Profit Out of the Game

Inequality has been modeled this way by banks and companies on purpose and again we have nobody at any government level with a clue and glad some of the major media is covering some of this. Been at this blog with that problem for 3 years and counting:) Privacy laws and bills are a waste of time without incorporating the data selling element since this is the biggest abusing element done for profit. Scroll down and watch the videos in the footer if you want a little more education on this topic too. So again when you use one of these devices just be aware that more than likely your data will be up for sale and who knows how far it will go and where it will appear and what analytics will be used to judge you as there’s nobody asking about the value of the complex analytics and big corporate profits are made this way. Great video at the link below that also explains from a former Quant on Wall Street who worked with Larry Summers, and it’s a good one and she’s honest and knows her stuff. You do have to kind of chuckle though with her personal comments about Larry which not really bad but she’s being logical with her observations and she tells you how she was hired to do a job to help with risk and how nobody used the numbers, so legal bases get covered having someone on staff in one area, oh and I do like the comments too about the red and blue graphs:) Anyone in technology or analytics will enjoy those in the video. This is all very well modeled here and it makes huge profits selling our data and you have no clue.

Modeling for Inequality With Segmentation, Insurance Industry Uses Backwards Segmentation As Some Models Stand to Threaten Overall Democracy

All of this can make you crazy and then we hear HHS wanting to speed up Health IT? Get a clue the short order code kitchen burned down a few years ago, so again we have folks that don’t’ understand the big picture here with what goes on “behind closed server doors” if you will, but it appears this the model that most are using so just be aware when your data pops up in unusual places and again I stand by my idea from a couple years ago that gets reiterated here often enough about licensing and excise taxing data sellers. It’s time if anyone wants to do anything to help consumers. As a side note too, here’s kind of a funny error factor with Google Plus and their data to where their algorithms thought I was a real duck and said my name was not compliant with their algorithms, and of course they fixed it, but not before I had to file an appeal with Google, the big data conglomerate too, so it happens. We know Google sells data too so with all the social networks they are all being more cognizant of being able to match your real name, to sell more data. Here’s the plan for the data sellers (links below) and seems extremely fair to me and it can also help fund the FDA and the NIH as those are consumer agencies we need. BD

Time Has Come to License and Tax the Data Sellers of the Web, Companies, Banks, Social Networks..Any One Making a Profit-Latest Microsoft/Google Privacy War Helping the Cause –Consumers Deserve to Know What Is Being Sold and To Who in a Searchable Format

“Devaluate the Algorithm” And “Tax the Data Sellers”–A Cure for Both Healthcare and an Economy Based Heavily on Intangibles–We’ve Lost Our Balance

“You can do anything with software”, quote from Mike Osinski who wrote the software that all the banks used and modified for the sub prime loans and he’s right, and he also says what many others including myself have said “it doesn’t always play out in the human world as designed in the fantasy world of developers”, something we need to all be aware of, and the video can been seen here. Again, everyone has their choice to make when it comes to software, devices, etc. and I’m just educating on how the data mechanics work and why you see some of what you see and hear out there today, and more so how your data ends up in places you have never seen or heard of, the data selling business that creates huge bank and corporate profits with maximizing intangible data for dollars. BD

The company announced today that it’s acquiring BodyMedia, creator of sophisticated health tracking devices used on the TV show The Biggest Loser. Additionally, Jawbone is launching an app platform for its Up health wristband today, allowing third-party companies to integrate their services with Jawbone’s data.

“BodyMedia has created one of the world’s largest libraries of raw and real-world human sensor data with 500 trillion data points,” noted Jawbone’s Travis Bogard, VP of product management and strategy, in an interview with VentureBeat (emphasis ours). That figure alone should tell you why Jawbone was eager to snap up BodyMedia.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/30/jawbone-takes-a-big-bite-out-of-health-tech-acquires-bodymedia-launches-up-app-platform/#OT3rjers1ptOqBwS.99

Kcentra Approved by the FDA to Reverse the Effects of Warfarin

2013-04-30T00:32:00.001-07:00

It is pretty common knowledge that Warfarin can be difficult to regulate and if the blood gets too thin, we now have an antidote. There are two newer drugs where you can read below that Kcentra does not work as they are a different class of blood thinners. As the article states there are some other reversal agents but the new drug, Kcentra is stated to be much faster acting. BD

Ever since the drug warfarin was discovered to be a highly effective anti-clotting agent as well as a good rat poison in the early 1950s, it has been the frontline weapon in preventing stroke among those with atrial fibrillation. But its growing use has always raised the specter of dangerously hard-to-stanch bleeding if someone taking it is wounded or bleeds internally from a fall or a car accident.

Roughly six decades after its introduction, Kcentra has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It's a new product designed to quickly reverse the effects of warfarin. The prothrombin complex concentrate is made from the pooled plasma of healthy donors, and it joins a cluster of other "reversal agents" capable of restoring coagulation, including vitamin K and fresh-frozen plasma, in people who take warfarin.

The new agent does not, however, work to reverse the effects of two anticoagulants that are new to the market -- dabigatran (marketed as Pradaxa) or rivaroxaban (marketed as Xarelto). Last year, a case study in the Journal of Neurosurgery underscored that physicians still lack reversal agents that can restore coagulation in patients taking these new medications, with sometimes deadly results.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-fda-reverse-anticoagulation-20130429,0,1131227.story

Bayer Buys Conceptus Contraception Device Company for Around a Billion

2013-04-29T23:13:00.001-07:00

You may or may not have heard of the product but it is a device that functions like having one’s tubes tied to prevent an egg from traveling via the fallopian tubes except the procedure can be performed in the doctor’s office and it is a permanent solution. Essure is the name of the product and it has been around for while. This was a bidding situation where Bayer won the bid and is paying a pretty good price for the company and Bayer has it’s own contraception products, Yaz for one so it would seem this company would be in the same product group. BD

Bayer AG (BAYN) agreed to buy Conceptus Inc. (CPTS) for about $1.1 billion in cash to add a permanent contraception device to complement the German company’s offerings in women’s health.

Revenue for Conceptus’s Essure contraceptive, a pair of flexible metal and fiber coils inserted in the fallopian tubes, jumped 22 percent in the first quarter. The planned acquisition comes at a time when sales of Leverkusen, Germany-based Bayer’s Yaz and Yasmin oral birth-control pills are falling because of competition from low-priced copies. Bayer also sells the Natazia pill and intrauterine devices such as Mirena.

Bayer will probably need to promote Essure, expanding its global reach, to justify the price of the acquisition, Alistair Campbell, an analyst at Berenberg Bank in London, said in a telephone interview.

U.S. regulators approved the device in 2002. It provides permanent contraception, much in the way tubal ligation does. Unlike that procedure, though, it requires neither surgery nor general anesthesia.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-29/bayer-to-buy-conceptus-to-add-contraceptive-procedure.html

3D Modeling Glasses Software Company, Patent Battle Going Up Against Big Corporation Health Insurance Company WellPoint Company–Subsidiary Watch

2013-04-29T20:22:00.001-07:00

Here’s one that got by me and I don’t catch them all but try to advice when I find perhaps less notable subsidiaries of health insurance companies that are perhaps a few links down the daisy chain. This is the story of a patent battle of the little company versus the subsidiary of WellPoint. Ditto, the small company states they had their patent covered and the subsidiary of WellPoint, 1-800 Contacts is suing them in court and will probably kill the small company. Ditto has even asked to license it, and you don’t get much better than that as you still get money for goodness sakes. Glasses.com the subsidiary of 1-800 contacts, the subsidiary of WellPoint bought a patent years ago and filed the lawsuit at the same time they brought out their 3D software for glasses. You can read the entire article at the bottom link but normally lawsuits only end up when licensing won’t take place for the most part, so again is this the big guy against the little guy here over glasses software? BD

Ditto is a 15-person eyewear startup that utilizes remarkable software — a 3D modeling system that replicates the buyer's face — to let customers try on glasses virtually before purchasing them. Unfortunately for Ditto, its innovative software has put the company in the crosshairs of Glasses.com.

Glasses.com is owned by 1-800 Contacts, a much larger online eyewear retailer that recently purchased an old patent from a defunct company (U.S. Patent 7,016,824 covers selling glasses online based on 3D models) and announced its own version of 3D try-on software for glasses - while simultaneously filing a patent-infringement lawsuit against Ditto.

1-800 Contacts claims that it plans to its own service as an iPad app sometime soon. But this plan was first publicized on April 17, 2013, while Ditto launched its version a year ago.

Making things even more expensive, 1-800 Contacts is suing California-based Ditto in its home state of Utah. Whatever the outcome of the suit, the most likely result is the depletion of Ditto's cash reserves and the destruction of the company.

The EFF was not impressed: "1-800-Contacts says it is not a patent troll. Sure, the company is not a classic patent troll - a shell company that does nothing but buy patents and sue - but it's little better."

http://readwrite.com/2013/04/29/weaponizing-the-patent-system-a-tiny-eyewear-startup-faces-financial-extinction

Study on How “Jail Breaker” Cancer Cells Escape Tumors and Spread Through the Body

2013-04-28T20:08:00.001-07:00

This study had over 100 investigators from 20 institutions working on it so it’s large enough number to substantiate some new findings when determining behavior patterns between metastatic cell and those that are not. They found the metastatic cells were softer and could squeeze through smaller spaces. The same cell lines were used by all. Of course this is the most dangerous part of cancer when metastasis takes place. From what I am reading in the entire article they of course seem to be unfortunately heartier and work with less oxygen. They also move slower and farther in a straight line. Metastasis with cancer cells as we know is responsible for most deaths from cancer and the more they can find out and perhaps find a treatment for the cells, well the closer we get to solving cancer. BD

A systematic comparison of metastatic breast cancer cells to healthy breast cells revealed dramatic differences between the two cell lines in their mechanics, migration, oxygen response, protein production, and ability to stick to surfaces.

The new study details how cells make the transition from nonmalignant to metastatic, a process that is not well understood.

“By bringing together different types of experimental expertise to systematically compare metastatic and nonmetastatic cells, we have advanced our knowledge of how metastasis occurs,” says Robert Austin, professor of physics at Princeton University.

The study also found that metastatic cells recover more rapidly from the stress of a low-oxygen environment than nonmetastatic cells, which is consistent with previous studies. Although the low-oxygen environment did kill many of the metastatic cells, the survivors rebounded vigorously, underscoring the likely role of individual cells in the spread of cancer.

http://www.futurity.org/health-medicine/how-jail-breaker-cancer-cells-escape/?buffer_share=74f14&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer%253A%252BMaverickNY%252Bon%252Btwitter

TechShop–High End Machinery Working With Software Technologies to Create Tangible Products

2013-04-28T19:51:00.001-07:00

This is great and they are making “tangible” products using technology and creating new ones. The owner used to be in software development and wanted to “hold things in his hand” so this is combination process of using software with some type of “manufactured” product, so it’s not just software alone being produced and who knows some of the inventions here could end up bringing jobs and new companies along. With access to both tools and technology it really opens up many opportunities. Dodocase was one product that was created at TechShop.

What you are finding are tech folks learning to work with their hands and combine the best of both worlds. TechShop is in San Francisco and plans to expand in to other cities. Will this branch off into a “medical” tech shop some day? BD

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/inventors-paradise-is-coolest-spot-in-san-francisco-sbqquptGRmm2M9JjZV~y3g.html

Angel of Death–Serial Killer Nurse– Technology Audit Records Helped Break the Case–Hospital Lied or Didn’t Know How Long Records Were Kept 60 Minute Video

2013-04-28T18:26:00.001-07:00

The story here is about the nurse that was using medications to kill patients in several hospitals. Somerset hospital was where he was finally caught. The nurse was sentenced a few years ago and this is the history and story of how it all went down after several patients were killed. They also used a nurse who worked to help catch him.

At the end they say hundreds of patients were killed with estimating as there are no bodies, etc. Scary how he just moved from one hospital to another. He was a critical care nurse. The manufacturer was the one who stated that records were held more than 30 days and Somerset had initially stated that was as far back as the records went. BD

Part Two of the Story…

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50145791n

Data Floating Around the Web and You Don’t Know How It Got There? Time to License and Excise Tax Data Sellers–Identify “Flawed Data” Epidemic At The Root of the Problem

2013-04-28T17:41:00.001-07:00

If you saw the news in the New York time and read here often enough then you know what the deal is on data selling, privacy and profits. I have quite a few articles about that topic as well as a couple ideas to help regulate and control some of this epidemic that is making everyone crazy and making banks and companies filthy rich. The best line from the entire article below and fully substantiates my year and a half old campaign to license and tax data sellers. It’s an epidemic that is not healthy but generates huge bank and corporate profits.

“But she didn’t know which company had collected and shared the data in the first place, so she didn’t know how to have her entry removed from the original marketing list. “

I do have to tell you have written about it to the FTC and other agencies and the hardest thing to get throughs someone’s head is the amount of money this creates and goes right to the bank or company bottom line, i.e. Walgreens in 2010 making short of $800 million selling data so since a couple years have passed I’m sure they are up over a billion in profits, but remember they are the most “innovative” company in someone’s words, maybe the most innovative data selling company? Well what I can say is that they are innovative in figuring out how to capture and sell mountains of our data. So much of what they provide also provides for scraping and selling your data.

They and other drug chains and pharmacy benefit managers reap a ton of money selling your data to insurance companies for one and I’m sure there’s tons more but we don’t know who the buyers are and what they buy. The can query your retail purchases and combine that with your prescription purchases and have yet one more profile. I have a friend who’s going through the same stuff being over marketed with diabetes information as she did a few searches, etc. for friend on the web and now she’s stuck will the US mail plus email marketing crap that comes in.

Now that the “data” has identified her as a diabetic, which is false, the next level of marketing shows up, the insurers buy this flawed data and they start marketing her with “now that you are a diabetic” information and it just doesn’t stop and she’ irritated and mad and I don’t blame her. Shoot I had my car insurance with their machine learning put a second driver on my car. The machine thought it was smarter than me I suppose, did an address match at a house still on record somewhere that I sold over a year ago so the new owner of my house that I sold over a year ago gets auto added to my policy.

Healthcare Scam Hits Up Seniors, Yet One More Good Reason to License and Tax Data Sellers, Where Do These Folks Get Their Lists and Did They Buy From a Licensed Data Seller..

As usual, banks and companies rack in the money while we have to fix all their mistakes they profited with on our own time. Free labor with consumers who are trapped as we can’t get a car, house or whatever until all the bank and corporate errors are fixed. That data that made someone millions or billions in profit. Health and Human Services doesn’t have a clue but just want everyone to “hurry up” with Health IT, so again clueless and we suffer.

Speed Up Rate of Change in Health IT?–“Short Order Code Kitchen Burned Down a Few Years Ago and There Was No Fire Sale”..IT Infrastructure Chance and Revisions Takes a Lot of ”Code”, “Time” and “ Most Importantly Money”

ANY PRIVACY LAWS THAT DO NOT INCORPORATE DATA SELLING IT INFRASTRUCTURES FOR REGUALTION ARE LAWS WITH NO BALLS AND DO NOTHING FOR CONSUMERS AND THAT’S ALL THAT WE HAVE SEEN.

I really have tried very hard to explain this and I get this blank look from law makers and others, duh? It what goes on behind “closed server doors’…and of course banks and companies don’t want you to know anymore than you have to so they can keep the flow going. See what they do with retirement funds with hedge funds, one more example, they hose you.

Sad to say too we have Richard Cordray who is a lost puppy as he announced he is building a data base on US Citizens to study how we interact with financial companies and software…give me a break as you can hire quants that can tell you and sure wish he would have gone to coding school or we had someone in his position who did. We need more than just an executive building a data base to show he’s doing something, again when you don’t have any tech background you do dumb things like that as you don’t have data mechanic logic and probably have some staff members that do and might be getting kick backs to keep him moving in this direction…he’s duped. Banks and insurance companies are really just software companies that move a lot of money for profit.

Richard Cordray, Fail With Understanding Flawed Models and Algorithms -Big Case of“Algo Duping”With Big Data-Save Time, Hire Quants Who Know How Consumer Financial Models Are Built and Function…Geez

Here’s an interesting new alliance with device companies joining health insurance trade associations..first thing that comes to my mind, device companies have collected data to sell to insurance companies. Insurance companies are addicted to any kind of data, useful or not and if not they can broker and resell it too, so here you go being sold half a dozen times down the corporate daisy chain. Look below, what are insurance companies doing buying your master card and visa data? They can take what they want and “resell” the rest when they get done with their queries, which will usually appear as new analytics report, software or whatever. That’s the way it works, they all do it.

Insurance Companies Are Buying Up Consumer Spending Data-Time is Here to License and Tax the Data Sellers-As Insurers Sell Tons of Data, Gets Flawed Data When Data Buyers Uses Out of Context Too

This is the solution and just one of my posts on the topic that nobody can get their head around that would give consumers a searchable website to see who sells what kind of data and to who and have all purchase a license to sell data and quarterly excise tax them, just like you and I pay an excise tax on a tire we need for our car. They pay as they make the billions in profits this time.

Time Has Come to License and Tax the Data Sellers of the Web, Companies, Banks, Social Networks..Any One Making a Profit-Latest Microsoft/Google Privacy War Helping the Cause –Consumers Deserve to Know What Is Being Sold and To Who in a Searchable Format

Another great thing too is that consumer agencies like the FDA and NIH could get supplemental funding and we need both of those agencies. You are being abused with flawed data. The link below has a great video to where you can hear NASA and other big corporations talk in a forum, stumbling around trying to figure out how to find value with Big Data, doesn’t get any better than that and with some of the throw against the wall to see what sticks methods being tried out there half of what they come up with will be a waste of investment.

Big Data/Analytics If Used Out of Context and Without True Values Stand To Be A Huge Discriminatory Practice Against Consumers–More Honest Data Scientists Needed to Formulate Accuracy/Value To Keep Algo Duping For Profit Out of the Game

When you look at what is really being done it’s easy to write posts like this as it’s fact and just uncovering that for the consumer, it’s not opinion or politics, just facts. Now it’s time for my little “I told you so with a couple back links going back 2 to 3 years. When you work with data and have a sales and marketing background as well, you can visualize easy enough and project what will occur in this area and it has.

Does the US Government Need a Department of Modeling and Algorithms–Is Data Addiction and Abuse the Next Up and Coming 12 Step Program, Some Classic Posts & Topics Revisited

“Devaluate the Algorithm” And “Tax the Data Sellers”–A Cure for Both Healthcare and an Economy Based Heavily on Intangibles–We’ve Lost Our Balance

Here’s a link to a link that has a ton of every day examples of Algo Duping and the resultant Attack of the Killer Algorithms, started this almost 2 years ago with the series. Again I use logic and know data mechanics and thus can easily see it. So when you see your data floating around out there know you have been probably been sold, once, twice, three or more times and the chances of that data being flawed is pretty big.

Modeling for Inequality With Segmentation, Insurance Industry Uses Backwards Segmentation As Some Models Stand to Threaten Overall Democracy

The thing is that my friend, who requested that I keep her name out of this column, does not have multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system.

But last year, she did search online for information about various diseases, including M.S., on a number of consumer health sites. She also subscribed to an online recommendation engine where she looked up consumer reviews of local physicians.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/technology/personal-data-takes-a-winding-path-into-marketers-hands.html

GeneWatch in the UK Warning of the Dangers and Profiteering With Linking DNA To Medical Records With Building Risk Algorithms For Profit–Personalized Marketing Without Consent

2013-04-26T07:33:00.001-07:00

We know that marketing today is on steroids and myself the no call list is even becoming a farce and doesn’t work well anymore. The calls keep coming so again I return back to needing laws that have real IT Infrastructure that regulate as without it, we have laws with no balls. It seems like that’s about all that Washington seems to be capable of today sadly with the severe lack of technology education and resistance to learn more that we see in so many that we elected.

It sounds like my campaign to license and tax data sellers might have some potential implication in the UK. I don’t know about you but the marketing out there today is more of a turn off than ever and I pay very little attention to most of it. It’s just garbage running off servers and finding it’s way to my inbox or phone. Even on a lot of the consumer mobile apps and others coming out where I get solicited, my first thoughts are really not in value of the app anymore either and my first focus is what are they trying to sell me and what kind of data are they scraping or mining and selling for profit. I still look and do cover what I think is valuable but junk is winning out today over value based on the volume and items that end up in my inbox. In the US seniors get it too and if I’m complaining and I know about the mechanics of it, look what seniors have to put up with, read the link below.

Healthcare Scam Hits Up Seniors, Yet One More Good Reason to License and Tax Data Sellers, Where Do These Folks Get Their Lists and Did They Buy From a Licensed Data Seller..

It sounds like the UK is pretty much on the same track here with this recent story about linking medical records and DNA and build up more data repositories so companies get tax breaks and come in and profit, before value has been determined and any concerns over privacy. Personalized marketing is what this is called in the article below and we have that here too outside of the healthcare area as well. The real issue here is where does the line of adding information and value to public health get blurred and profiting takes over?

Personalized risk assessments are in a position to do more marketing than anything else and well yes if there’s a bit of benefit in there for public health than it will be marketed too and the big issue here too is consent. Again I keep saying that data sellers should be licensed and quarterly taxed as this would do a couple things with one generating revenue and moving some money back to the consumer side and secondly, at least there’s a record of all who sell data and what kind of data they sell. The more data that is sold without some kind of IT infrastructure, the more flawed data we get and and more junk analytics will appear…marketing. I realize research has it’s value for better health but the focus is not on that area today, it’s all money and your genes only have value if someone can make a buck with the data first. BD

Time Has Come to License and Tax the Data Sellers of the Web, Companies, Banks, Social Networks..Any One Making a Profit-Latest Microsoft/Google Privacy War Helping the Cause –Consumers Deserve to Know What Is Being Sold and To Who in a Searchable Format

Privacy Wanted–So Let’s Require Those Who Sell Web Data to Register and Tax the Transactions and Publicly Disclose Who They Sell To With a Federal Registry

Anonymisation here, Wallace argued, is impossible. For example, it would be possible to swab DNA from a coffee cup and compare this to your sequence, also linked to your medical record, stored in a research database. The HGSG plan threatens to remove people's right to know exactly who is using their genomic data and why - as required by the Helsinki Declaration - and the building of a biometric database without consent, which will allow for tracking and categorization of all individuals and those individual's relatives. This data is mostly not relevant to patient care, and could lead to stopping screening criteria in favor of individual feedback of personalized risk predictions, Wallace said. And marketing.

Ultimately, this means the entire population could unwittingly become a profit-making market for genome sequencing with presenting a direct benefit to the people whose DNA is being collected, including babies and children being sequenced without their consent. This will lead to investors cashing in and intermediaries, such as Google, building risk algorithms for profit and personalized marketing - indeed, Google's Sergey Brin is involved in the gene testing company 23andMe.

Supporters of 'Public Health Genomics', Wallace argued, said that they think data mining and storing genomes is necessary for the public health - but this itself undermines article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to privacy. It is also disputed just how effective genetic variants are as predictors of common diseases.

Further implications, according to Wallace, is a shifting away from public health controls on products or health inequalities in favor of personalized marketing. It also threatens a de-skilling in the NHS, opening up the floodgates to commercial control over diagnosis and prognosis. Personalized risk assessments themselves will be used to tout products and other medications.

http://news.techeye.net/science/your-genetic-make-up-to-be-stored-without-consent-for-profit#ixzz2RZvat8jA

Cook Recalls Zilver PTX Drug Eluting Stent Due to Potential Delivery System Separation Prompts

2013-04-26T00:06:00.001-07:00

I covered the Cook Zilver Stent quite a bit here as it’s one that goes in the leg to help fight PAD. The recall is for systems that have not been used and patients who have the implant are fine and do not need to worry. Stents in the leg area are more rugged and have stealthier builds than one for the heart area obviously as the legs move and the heart is stationary. The risk on the delivery system is very small but all are being recalled and the stent itself is ok. It’s the catheter that has a small potential to break. BD

“The recall, said Rob Lyles, vice president and global leader of Cook Medical's Peripheral Interventional clinical division, is specific to the delivery system, not the stent itself. If a patient has had a Zilver PTX stent implanted and the delivery system was removed safely and intact, that patient is at no risk and is not affected by this recall. Bare metal versions of Cook Medical's Zilver Flex(R) stent use a different delivery system that is not included in this recall.”

Cook Medical Gets FDA Approval for Zilver PTX Drug Eluting Stent for the Treatment of Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD)

Zilver Drug Coated Leg Stent for Treating PAD From Cook Medical Meets Safety Goals

Based on its investigation into a small number of complaints that the delivery system of the device had separated at the tip of the inner catheter, Cook Medical has initiated a nationwide/global voluntary recall of its Zilver(R) PTX(R) Drug Eluting Peripheral Stent. Cook received 13 complaints of delivery system tip separation with an occurrence rate of 0.043 percent. Two adverse events, including one death, occurred in cases where a tip separation was reported.

Potential adverse events that may occur in cases where inner delivery catheter breakage occurs include: possible surgery to remove the catheter tip; vascular occlusion due to an unretrieved catheter tip; thrombosis; amputation; and possible cardiac arrest.

These devices were distributed to 84 medical institutions in the United States between December 13, 2012 and April 16, 2013. Cook initiated a voluntary global recall of all sizes, diameters and lot numbers (Catalog number ZIV6*****PTX). Consignees should stop using the device, quarantine any inventory and return it for credit.

http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20130424-916534.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Richard Cordray, Fail With Understanding Flawed Models and Algorithms -Big Case of“Algo Duping”With Big Data-Save Time, Hire Quants Who Know How Consumer Financial Models Are Built and Function…Geez

2013-04-25T21:28:00.001-07:00

He starting to remind me of Blue Cross and their data mining to find out if their insured were buying clothes a size larger. Anyway in reading this article he’s sucked in and watch the 4 videos in the footer of this blog to see how modeling, math and programming works. Sub prime could not have happened without it.

Over a year ago I questioned how effective he would be with a law background and seems it’s about right on par with going to take time and analyze data and is so far behind the technology 8 ball he can’t see it. When are folks going to learn you don’t put a lawyer in a job where technology expertise is needed. The banks and companies will just model all around the agency by the time they figure out what is up and what is down. This is not personal as I have said the same about other cabinet heads and I’m not alone.

We see stuff like this and it’s not how a technologist on a mission would act, plain and simple we use logic and code and unless you have spent some time with a little technology, executive heads are a waste of time. I do hope Elisabeth Warren’s office picks up the pace too because she’s about the best we have out there if she doesn’t get sucked into the old legal methodologies today that are too slow.. They just don’t get it and use all the wrong methodologies when time is of the essence. Sure you need lawyers to make sure all the legal areas are covered. Tech folks just sit back and shake their heads. Here’s what I said a little over a year ago and as a matter of fact it had all kinds of government agencies reading it and I posted it on a Sunday so that was kind of why I even noticed as I was having a busy traffic day and wanted to see what post was so hot.

President Appoints Richard Cordray as New Consumer Financial Protection Chief - Hope He Knows And Understands Correcting Flawed Math and Formulas To Battle the “Financial Attack of Killer Algorithms” On Consumers With Banks and Corporate USA

in reading this article, it says the banks groaned and moaned but shoot they are so far ahead with their modeling and anything the government comes up with, well the banks and many companies have already been there and done that. If he only could understand the models that banks, insurance and other companies build. Read up on Algo Duping for your own information too. With all the hacking going on right now creating yet more data to secure..well I’m sure the banks and companies might sell his department the information too, as data selling is an epidemic and none of them are missing a chance to make a buck.

Last time I wrote about Richard Cordray I recommended a book and I’ll do it again as I don’t think he has read it yet from what I am reading here in this article. Also in the footer, watch the excellent video too from Charlie Siefe, Professor at NYU who wrote the book “Proofiness, the Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception”. The other day on Twitter famous author Tom Peters and I were talking about it and he went out and bought it. We got on the topic as we were discussing Christopher Steiner and his book and videos on how algorithms are taking over, “Automate This” and so Proofiness is the next logical book on this topic. The book is good and clears up a lot of nonsense, again Algo Duping. Heck I wrote many posts on this blog on bad algorithms that are used out of context in my Attack of the Killer Algorithms too, over 50 Chapters of every day abuse with consumers so we can’t learn from those right? We are addicted to data and this massive data base is going to take a while to build and gee, guess what it’s going to fall into one of those potential wasted efforts as half of all the analytics bought will be a waste. Heck I even have bankers agreeing with me there but folks without something besides a legal background can’t get it.

Half of Analytics Investments By Companies and Banks Will Be a Waste–What Do We Analyze with Big Data and Does It Have Value–Some Algo Fairies Would Do Better at Disneyland…

Anyone today with some knowledge of how banks and companies work knows that they are pretty much just software companies that control and move a lot of money and until their models are questioned and maybe even certified as built by the Quants, inequality grows. That’s a good link above as and here I am again as a consumer advocate agreeing with an incognito banker again. He’s one crossing a little bit over so he remains anonymous but he knows quants, algos, models and so on so we can talk and shoot if that is not enough for one to give some thought to a new direction instead of building data bases and getting lost in trying to find value in this area with the Big Data dupe, I don’t know what is.

Do something constructive and get some real money back over to the consumers and get some privacy with IT infrastructure to support regulating it..license and tax the data sellers, Walgreens making around a billion a year selling data, nice quarterly taxes and revenue on that one and that’s only one. States do some of this anyway with licensing but get it big time and have a federal site disclosing what kind of data they sell with their license and to who.

The $460 million is a drop in the bucket compared to taxing data sellers, which is by the way an epidemic in the US but again we have a lawyer who can’t understand servers, algorithms, models and how models shift the money. What a disappointment with this effort and again he too…just Algo Duped and no clue. I swear the cabinet seems to be catching that GOP virus that is going around when it comes to brains. This is just so sad when one can think logically as I and other do and watch the nonsense and continued duping with banks and companies who just roll in more money and keep the complexities rolling every where they can as that means consumers in the dark and more money for the wealthy.

Time Has Come to License and Tax the Data Sellers of the Web, Companies, Banks, Social Networks..Any One Making a Profit-Latest Microsoft/Google Privacy War Helping the Cause –Consumers Deserve to Know What Is Being Sold and To Who in a Searchable Format

Last but not least, it’s all about context and we already have models, math and code being used against consumers and the data keeps getting additional flaws as well. I like the video I put at this post as you can hear NASA, Ford and several other companies saying “what in heck are we doing with big data, where the value” and they talk quants as well. T-Mobile gal was spot on with what they were doing, said it was silly. BD

The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is following the example of big companies that mine pools of information for insight into consumer behavior. The agency maligned by big banks for being overaggressive is assembling a Big Data operation to monitor how millions of Americans interact with lenders and rack up debt.

The two-year-old CFPB—which recently announced it’s recouped $425 million for consumers wronged by financial-services companies—is building massive data sets with records from companies it oversees. It’s demanding information on credit cards, credit monitoring, and debt cancellation products from major banks, and spending more than $10 million to buy data on auto and payday loans as well as mortgages from Experian (EXPGF), CoreLogic (CLGX), and other companies. “Within the next year,” says Sendhil Mullainathan, the consumer bureau’s assistant director for research, “CFPB will be the best place for consumer finance data.”

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-25/richard-cordray-and-the-cfpb-are-monitoring-your-banking-habits

UPS Acquires European Pharmaceutical Logistics Company CEMELOG Moving Closer to Pharmacy Benefit Management Business Models

2013-04-25T12:42:00.001-07:00

UPS is getting closer to being a Pharmacy Benefit Manager or Tactical Partner as when you look at how they are filling orders from medical devices and the IT Infrastructure they presently have in house, well it’s just moving that way. A ways back I was talking to a UPS executive and I mentioned that some day they just might be the end PBM and you can see the logistics patterns and technology moving that way. With on premise Software As a Service Capabilities the data is there and again it’s how this will develop. None of us really know for sure in 5 years what all this will exactly look like…so if they are already in the distribution end of it, you just don’t know who will buy who anymore in the big corporate conglomerates.

So will they own somebody like Express Scripts someday? Again that’s putting the question out there in a big way and there’s more data action of course coming from other areas too..so just thinking out loud a little bit today. The same could be said for FedEx…we just don’t know but indicators kind of point that way. Here’s a post from the middle of 2012 where I’m kind of asking the same types of questions.

UPS Healthcare Fulfillment Centers Continue to Grow And What Effect Could This Have on the Future Further Changing the Pharmacy Benefit Business?

A couple more back links here with some of the changing landscapes of logistics and pharmaceuticals. The facilities are being built by UPS so no white elephant here by any means. You can view more of the IT capabilities of CEMELOG here.

UPS Expanding Healthcare Focus With Giant Warehouses for Temperature Sensitive Drugs and Vaccines

UPS to spend $100 million on 4 New Global Distribution Centers To Serve Biotech, Pharma and Medical Device Companies

Logistics was my former life so I have little knowledge here having called on pharmaceutical giants in my past as well. I saw all those truck in the video and it started reminding me of Yellow Freight and FedEx and the big warehouses of the drug company clients and my short stint as a facility manager years ago:) How many pounds per man hour is that facility producing and where’s those load racks:)

Don’t pay too much attention to me though (grin)..I just think this way and with my logic and back in 2009 I also said that running HHS would morph into an 80% IT type of job too..think we are there yet..pretty darn close I think. BD

As a part of UPS’s global healthcare growth strategy, UPS announced today that it will acquire Hungarian pharmaceutical logistics company, CEMELOG. Based outside of Budapest, CEMELOG has been offering customers across central and eastern Europe tailor-made healthcare logistics solutions for over a decade, and serves some of the most recognized healthcare brands in the world.

The acquisition will further strengthen UPS’s healthcare presence in Europe with regional expertise and services. It also will add three new facilities to UPS’s dedicated global healthcare network, bringing our total number of healthcare facilities to 41.

http://blog.ups.com/2013/04/25/the-perfect-match-ups-brings-cemelog-into-its-global-healthcare-family/

BankUnited CEO Whining, Says Universal Health Care Fooled Them- HMO Built Models That Lied Better, Not Too Often Banks End Up on the Short End of the Algorithms With Executing Credit Models For Profit…

2013-04-25T10:11:00.001-07:00

Well this is what the CEO told investors and you know what, if I were a share holder or investor with the bank, I would be asking about this. How is it that you were out modeled by an HMO insurance company? Now that has to be a low blow to the belt as the banks normally have the best modelers money can buy and smart. The US government gets socked by them all the time, as I write about it here. This is as bad as Jamie Dimon saying “I don’t know” when asked about the JPMorgan models.

The CEO must have blinders on here with his comment that “you don’t expect a company that is so visible to do this”…well it’s been going on for a long time and now more information on data mechanics is surfacing as those who have seen this going south are talking about it, warning us. Want to talk sub prime anyone? His quote is exactly what I attempt to help consumers with in learning how some of this works and you don’t need to be a mathematician or quant, programmer or anything else to acknowledge this occurs, just don’t be bliss. So an HMO got the best of a bank…what a surprise.

“If you look back to what is the lesson learned?” Kanas queried: “If somebody will completely fabricate a story it’s tough to figure it out.”

In reality this business has become so bad with lying models, the real people who have the talent to create such (and it’s not the executives or front office folks that make big money either) the Quants have their own code of ethics so they don’t get looped in any longer with writing code and models that they know are not accurate. They are hired to do a job and don’t want to be put in the corner to where they are to lie with numbers for profit. We need to listen to the talented people as they create good stuff too and there are models that work and have levels of accuracy and don’t just lie for profit.

Big Data–The Data Science Code of Ethics-Designed By Those Who Create Models - Don’t Fall Victim To Write Fictitious Code and Models Just to Make Money With Clients Demanding Such

All you have to do to see the fear of having talent even at the government level of coming out of bliss is watch the PBS special, the Untouchables. Listen to DOJ Manny talk and there is zero level of confidence in his tone of voice and what he says. Anyone in tech can pick that up with listening for 5 minutes.

“The Untouchables-Too Big to Jail” Frontline Documentary Shows Department of Justice’s Fear of Prosecuting Big Banks–No Confidence In Using Current Day Technologies To Investigate –Video

Scroll down again to the bottom and watch the documentary “Quants, the Alchemists of Wall Street” and you will see Emanuel Derman and Paul Wilmott discuss their code of ethics they came up with a long time ago. They wrote their Financial Modeler’s Manifesto after the financial crisis…see both tin the Quants video at the bottom of this page. They both tell you how common sense drops and that a major rethink is needed before we have a mathematical market meltdown. If the market melts down with math, so does healthcare as so many are traded on the open markets, same thing. Pay attention to some critical words…an illusion of understanding..

The best quote out of the Quant documentary is Mike Oslinski though “you can do anything with software” and he’s the guy who wrote the software that all banks used and modified for their sub prime mortgage schemes. Banks and insurance companies are really just software companies anymore that have the power to create the ones that move money to their pockets. They feed on the fear of math with consumers and sometimes the government too. This is huge substantiation to agree with some Australian bankers, half of all the analytics created will be waste of money.

So the HMO, Universal Health Care had some real talent working there to outsmart a bank I think. It’s all about greed of course once again. You can look at the want ads today for health insurance companies and they want to hire more quants, data miners, and so forth and you do have to stop and ask the question, when is enough enough? Why do you think policies are going up all the time as this is not cheap work with digging and digging through tons of data bases hoping to find that one little tiny illustrious link with non linear methods. Science does this and it’s what they do and is accepted as that is what science is and it takes years and years of research and trial and error, but with flawed data and models that are already out there in the financial world, do you think this same process is emulated the same here, of course not. On top of that everyone seems to think that “you just run out to the code kitchen cook up some money making models in a short amount of time..doesn’t work that way

Well I guess we might be in for a ride to see if we see the repeating as the talent and quants with insurers is increasing and maybe the banks have met their modeling matches…insurance companies? I call a lot of this activity we see today, “Algo Duping” and hey might be a better name for this process at some point in time but for now this what I call it. BD

http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/blog/2013/04/bankunited-ceo-says-universal-health.html

Fun and Games With an MRI

2013-04-24T21:37:00.001-07:00

Hospital got a new MRI and did a few tricks with the old one and then made both the new and the old MRI sing…BD Smoke on the Water…

MRI versus a chair…

How to Quench an MRI..

MRI Quench

The Retirement Game– 401k Complexities Just Like Health Insurance Have Consumers Screaming for New Models With Transparent and Accurate Mathematical Realities– More Attacks Of The “Killer Algorithms”

2013-04-24T00:48:00.001-07:00

The 401k Plan, is one of the products that consumers buy that Americans don’t know the price and they don’t know the quality. Once again we return to the world of complexities and so how did it get that way? Models and software that execute algorithms and formulas that manage the accounts. Consumers are attending educational meetings and walking out confused. Also, due this fact consumers don’t know the “danger”…we are back to those algos as mutual funds through regulation has been able to protect themselves, no transparency.

When 401ks began, they all looked good and were performing well in the late 90s and people were impressed as investments were growing. In 2000 the market collapsed and all the earnings were gone. 401k money was going into company stock. Savings were lost and so were jobs. Stock algorithms moved the money based on markets. Later when the real estate crashed, jolt number two with after having lost 401k money, now the house was not worth much. Consumers are now borrowing against their 401k accounts while Wall Street still gave out huge bonuses.

One person decided to dig deeper and found many fees and charges in his 401k as his money was not growing and found marketing fees, asset manager fees, administrative fees trading fees, record keeping fees and many more. He also found investments in housing loans, like the ones that made the market crash. Fees are very high and the funds were lousy.

People who own the models are the corporations…”hedge funds are set up to hose pension funds”…one sentence says Cathy O’Neill and I recommend watching her presentation filmed at Columbia, as she has coined some of her presentations “methods of math destruction”. She used to work as a Quant aka Mathematician at a Hedge Fund a few years ago and gives you some inside information relative to their culture and how they think. Her job was in futures predictions with risks and they had her there doing a job and somewhat ignored her work? Manipulating models to lie can make money and it has been done for quite a while and this keeps inequality growing.

Modeling for Inequality With Segmentation, Insurance Industry Uses Backwards Segmentation As Some Models Stand to Threaten Overall Democracy

Most investors have no clue on all the fees that they pay. The PBS reporter even looked at his own 401k and found a lot of the same. He found another layer of cost, a legal kickback arrangement to the brokers. Brokers won’t distribute their funds unless they get a part of the deal and the fees are paid by the 401k holder. An executive from Wells Fargo explains it’s the education process to help…and it’s too complicated…choosing the right options. Wall Street wins again. Index funds are discussed and how they would be safer and more transparent than mutual funds. The term “financial advisor” is a title to be gray, find out what they really are…brokers sometimes. They are looking out for their pockets first. “You Can Do Anything With Software”…a related read at the link below.

Banks Are Actually Just Software Companies and the Same Can Pretty Much Be Said for Health Insurance Companies As Well-5 Unspoken Reasons Tech Projects Fail

How well is retirement working as reform has failed. The problem is that all this is done via technology, models and math. Below is another related video that discusses how Wall Street works. Retirement dreams are busted, people are earning less and it’s even harder to save and get healthcare. So the journalist here is looking at 401k plan algorithms, one after another to see if there’s one that will maybe be the right one…and you can’t win against the machines.

Below is another related PBS video from Cathy O’Neill and pay attention to what she has to say as she’s right with many of her ideas with reform…it’s too complicated. A couple quotes below from the video…BD

“We all put money into our 401(k)s. We work our lives. We're putting this money in once a month. It goes to Wall Street. Wall Street -- through these ways of managing these large funds, enormous -- I mean, I'm just one of the -- [let me] pause to say the amount of money we're talking about I measured in terms of percentage of GDP [gross domestic product]. This is an enormous amount of money, trillions of dollars.

So anyway, the average person puts this money in once a month. Wall Street takes it and skims off. With the help of hedge funds, but also with just the help of poor trading and bad decisions, it just skims off a certain percentage every quarter, so larger percentages every year. At the very end of somebody's career, they retire and they get some of that back.”

“And often the people in charge of risk are not given enough power to actually implement. Even if they see risky trends going on that shouldn't be going on, they're not given enough power to actually stop them. I mean, great example -- in fact, a recent example -- is the chief risk officer from MF Global who was, you know, warned about [CEO Jon] Corzine's big bet on Italian bonds, and he was ignored and left. And I'm not sure if he was fired or he just resigned.”

After watching both videos do you not believe there is modeling for inequality going on right and left? It is what it is and we need more on the government side for sure, hire some of the folks who have gamed the system with models and math so they can battle the other side, intelligently, the missing puzzle piece. BD

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/retirement-gamble/

FDA Creates New Mobile Cellphone App to Help Doctors And Consumers Report Deaths and Injuries From Medical Devices and Drugs to the Agency And They Won’t Sell Your Data Either

2013-04-24T00:09:00.000-07:00

This is a great idea as it has been a cumbersome process in reporting such to the FDA. The application can be downloaded to an Android or IPhone unit and is called MedWatcher. It was developed at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical with coordinating efforts with the FDA, all working together. Epidemico, a company that was spun out from Boston Children’s Hospital run the system. The information submitted is de-identified and sent to the appropriate government agency. This is the first privacy notice that is really understandable too, straight out unlike the ones we read that kind of tell you they don’t sell your data but they do. The software does not take responsibility for errors as this is a community effort and they have the right to remove an item as such.

“We will credit your contribution by publishing it with your name or an acceptable pseudonym of your choosing, or you may remain anonymous. We collect personal information such as, but not limited to, your email address and Internet Protocol (IP) address. We reserve the right to use this information internally, including for correspondence with the contributor, but will not sell, share, rent, or otherwise reveal this information to any third party except as required by law, or to address issues of noncompliance.”

It appears that this data will more than likely contribute to the FDA Sentinel program which began a few years ago to where information is gathered again to help the FDA inform and investigate potential harmful issues and you can easily access the data base to look up information on file too, a winner.

“Monitoring the safety of its regulated products is a major part of FDA’s mission to protect public health. But, currently, the Agency’s efforts are limited to its largely passive safety monitoring systems, which depend on healthcare professionals, patients, consumers and pharmaceutical companies to report any adverse effects of FDA-regulated products. The Sentinel System enables the FDA to actively query diverse automated healthcare data holders—like electronic health record systems, administrative and insurance claims databases, and registries—to evaluate possible medical product safety issues quickly and securely. “

In addition the FDA is wanting to involve the consumer with helping educate with medical devices and it is called the FDA Patient Network. You can read Dr. Hamburg’s announcement here and view the video introduction below on how it works. Nice work from the FDA! You can also keep updated here with clinical trial information and recalls.

And now a word about FDA/NIH funding…above I mentioned their privacy statement and if you read the news of late there’s been all types of articles about keeping them funded. Here’s a link that would solve that problem with licensing and taxing data sellers (so we know who they are and what they sell and the money would go to both agencies so keep them from serious funding cuts.

Corporate US profits from selling and mining data are in the billions with profits, ie. Walgreens making short of $800 million in 2010 alone, and of course being in healthcare they would benefit from the FDA’s work so a tax I would think they and all other banks and companies should not resist and consumers would win with a federal site listing all data seller licenses and what kind of data they sell and to who. It’s an epidemic that needs to be regulated anyway as it is truly impacting inequality in the US as some data gets used out of context and the more that is sold without some form of regulation right now is leading to more flaws and more exposure to security breaches as data is stored on multiple locations and we don’t know if all of those are secure or not, they should be but the news tells us otherwise sometimes. Here’s a general explanation of my campaign on this topic.

One More Good Reason to Tax the Data Sellers– Create Additional Funding for the NIH and FDA From Sources That Otherwise Are Too Greedy to Share & Contribute

You may have seen the United Labs and other United Healthcare subsidiary news articles and it’s complex to read the entire structure but pretty much the exact same type of data is being collected and it looks to be data and analytics for sale that just flat out competes with what the FDA is doing here with device and drug information, so license them too and apply the excise tax to what they are doing for profit. BD

More Data For Sale Soon With Shared Clarity With United Healthcare Labs and Dignity Health–Crunching Numbers on Medical Devices With Shared Clarity

The Food and Drug Administration is creating a largely automated surveillance system to monitor safety of high-risk medical devices and has authorized a smartphone app for doctors to simplify reporting deaths and injuries to the agency.

The federal agency's efforts are designed to spot early on possibly dangerous flaws in high-risk medical devices like defibrillators, pacemakers, heart valves and joint implants. In recent years, when some of these medical devices have malfunctioned, it has taken months or even years before authorities were certain whether those flaws were a major public-health hazard—or simply a smattering of isolated bad events.

The early-warning system will rely on electronic medical information including patients' medical records and bills, insurance databases and companies' registries of experience with individual devices.

When a device malfunctions, or needs to be surgically replaced far more often than other devices, the FDA will be able to track these events. In time, when hospitals include UDI information in their own records, injuries or deaths related to devices will get automatically reported to the FDA, he said.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323735604578440630586144800.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#articleTabs%3Darticle

Race With Machines–TED Video Covers Many Good Issues, Shortcomings With Economists Today With Trying to Use Old GDP Models Where Today’s Technology Drains Most of Its Value

2013-04-23T12:23:00.001-07:00

This is a pretty hot topic today and I write about it a lot here, have even asked the Forbes guys which articles were algorithmically have been produced and where did the humans write. That’s out there and other sites besides Forbes are using it as well. The charts used here in the video showing GDP from the past and it is good for educational purposes. Productivity is at an all time high, why, because technology and machines are doing a lot of it. This creates a problem for standard metrics. I like when he ventures into how economists measure value and “getting things for free”. Zero price means zero waste. Music industry is half the size he states years ago. He states we have not reached the end of growth. Machines are doing it.

He makes one mistake though on the “digital” side that things can be replicated with perfect quality…ok that works for music but not date with algorithmic formulas that do a lot of things out there. Just look at the markets for errors, thousands of them, daily, mostly small but the big ones hit the news of course, but a small one may not hit the majority, but it could affect you. Lot’s of flawed data out there.

We do have ways to measure that we never had before and machines do it faster. He does a good job in briefly going over the linear world and how we are geared in that and the other side is the non linear world. Ideas don’t get used up and he says exactly what I say about software building on itself so I won’t bore you with a lot of that as it has worked that way for years.

He talks about the break throughs we are seeing by combining all of the above in the image. He talks about IBM Watson and machine learning and how it learned faster than any human. Remember though those who control the input, models and how Watson is used control the money, like Citibank is doing. Less than a year ago it went to work on Wall Street, to runs those models, query and work faster than humans with analytics. Again, remember Watson kicks out what it has been programmed to do and use. As you can see from my link title, Congress has not figured this one out yet and so they get out modeled right and left and duped on what is accurate and what has value, they are out tooled here. Here’s what happens when machine learning makes an error, Google’s machines said I was a real duck..in other words all the meanings, etc. were not “learned” if you will and it went with what it had…it thought I was a real bird.

IBM Watson Going to Work At Citigroup on Wall Street–Congress Didn’t See Big Data As A Tool (Hadoop Framework) When They Had Their Chance…For Consumers The Attack of the Killer Algorithms–Chapter 22

What is left out of this discussion is the disruption of data selling, guess what works here…machine learning…fewer people have jobs too. Some of this is due to technology and some of it is flawed data that misses a lot of our talented people behind. You can also watch a video at the link below that also describes big data being used out context as big companies don’t have a clue on where non linear value lies and banks make some of this up or just lie with models…LIBOR anyone.

Big Data/Analytics If Used Out of Context and Without True Values Stand To Be A Huge Discriminatory Practice Against Consumers–More Honest Data Scientists Needed to Formulate Accuracy/Value To Keep Algo Duping For Profit Out of the Game

Economists need to learn about “free” and the “data selling” epidemic that takes place to allow them some better accuracy and realism as the past offers history for education but not much value for gating the future.

Modeling for Inequality With Segmentation, Insurance Industry Uses Backwards Segmentation As Some Models Stand to Threaten Overall Democracy

Everyone is attacking Obamacare, and it’s not the overall program itself but rather the complexities of models created by insurers that is one big chunk of problems and you can even see that with the recent frustration with the Inspector General with wanting insurer CEOs to “certify” to CMS that their information is correct and accurate because it doesn’t show up that way now in all areas on Medicare. Gov.

Not ObamaCare That is Failing, It’s the Models and Subsequent Algorithms that Execute Within IT Infrastructures Intersecting, Changing And Conflicting– The Affordable “Complexities” Act…

All in all the video covers a lot of areas relative to machine learning as best as one can in the 20 minutes of a TED presentation. We still need to balance our intangible and tangible worlds. People are racing against the machines and some are losing. We could have some of the best manufacturing in the US if only the other verticals are given more technology instead of just selling data.

Think about this if we didn’t have the threat of always having a profit and using data against us, what we could do, but we don’t have that world sadly at all. We still blame shift and don’t work well as teams and use technology to segregate now in many areas, whether you are the evil fat person, the sedentary person or whatever, that is how we see a lot of technology used. We have banks and companies that profit and make billions off selling flawed data and we end up being their “free” labor force to fix it as we are stuck and can’t buy a car, get a job or much else until we spend out dime fixing corporate America’s profits where they don’t give a damn about the average US consumer anymore. Watch the video above at the Modeling for Inequality link above for more on that. License and tax data sellers to make them accountable? Yes the way to go and step one of moving some money back to the 99% side for all of us. BD

Time Has Come to License and Tax the Data Sellers of the Web, Companies, Banks, Social Networks..Any One Making a Profit-Latest Microsoft/Google Privacy War Helping the Cause –Consumers Deserve to Know What Is Being Sold and To Who in a Searchable Format

http://www.ted.com/talks/erik_brynjolfsson_the_key_to_growth_race_em_with_em_the_machines.html?utm_campaign=&utm_content=awesm-publisher&awesm=on.ted.com_GrowthAhead&utm_medium=on.ted.com-static&utm_source=t.co

MMR Receives Biotech Patent in Australia For Anti-CD20 Monoclonal Antibody Assets

2013-04-22T23:34:00.001-07:00

If you have been following the history on the MMR patents, then you know that most of their patents have been related to personal health records but the company also has biotech interests including thousands of patient tumor samples, etc. CD20 monoclonal antibodies are used in the treatment of B-cell Non-Hodgkin disease. The original announcement was here back in 2008 with the merger.

Favrille Biotech and MyMedicalRecords.com, Inc. Announce Merger Agreement

The company has been pursuing patent violations relative to personal health records and below is an example and a link with one EHR company who has signed an agreement to license MMR Health IT patents. BD

4Medica Electronic Medical Records Company Signs Agreement With MMRGlobal (MyMedicalRecord) To License Health IT Patents

LOS ANGELES, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/22/13 -- MMRGlobal, Inc. (OTCQB: MMRF) ("MMR") today announced that the Australian Patent Office has issued a Notice of Allowance (NOA) for the Company's anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody assets, #2007338607, under the title, "Antibodies and Methods for Making and Using Them." The patent application was originally filed on September 14, 2007. The Australian NOA is significant to the Company in that it reinforces the value of the U.S. antibody patent that was announced by the Company on April 15th, 2013 and the similar antibody patent issued in Mexico in August 2012. These patents for the Company's anti-CD20 monoclonal antibodies have particular utility in fighting cancers and are considered important assets of the Company based on benefits and commercial value demonstrated by Rituxan®, an anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody with reported sales of USD $7.285 billion in 2012, which is due to go off patent in 2015. Additional patent applications for the Company's antibodies are pending in a number of other countries including Brazil, Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Europe, Japan and Korea. In addition to its biotech patents.

The Company acquired its biotechnology portfolio as a result of a reverse merger with Favrille, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, in January 2009. Favrille invested more than $100 million in research and development on its FavId™/Specifid™ vaccine trials and use of customized tumor cells to treat lymphoma patients and other technologies. MMR's biotech assets include an extensive portfolio including its anti-CD20 monoclonal antibodies, data from vaccine trials, thousands of patient tumor samples and other intellectual property of which the Company has been advised by experts may have inestimable value.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=178404&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1809065&highlight=

Branded Solutions Compounding Pharmacy Recalls All Sterile Non Expiring Drug Products

2013-04-22T23:07:00.001-07:00

The FDA was at work inspecting another compounding facility after the nightmare that occurred in New England with the deaths related to bacteria meningitis with contaminated compounded drugs. Here’s what the website looked like today..

Three pages of mostly injectable drugs on the list can be found here on this 3 page pdf. The company is a division of Axium Healthcare located in Florida. BD

“Axium Healthcare Pharmacy, Inc. is a nationwide, privately-held "Clinical Specialty Pharmacy" licensed and permitted to operate in all 50 states. Axium Healthcare Pharmacy, Inc. specializes in providing physicians, patients, health plans and other healthcare providers with injectable and oral brand name products.”

Balanced Solutions Compounding Pharmacy (Balanced Solutions), a division of Axium Healthcare Pharmacy, Inc., of Lake Mary, Fla., is voluntarily recalling all lots of its sterile non-expired drug products due to a lack of sterility assurance and concerns with product quality controls.

Health care facilities and health care providers that have received sterile products from Balanced Solutions should immediately check their medical supplies, quarantine the products, and follow the recall instructions from Balanced Solutions. Patients who were administered any sterile drug products produced and distributed by Balanced Solutions and who have concerns should contact their health care providers.

During an FDA inspection of Balanced Solutions, investigators observed poor practices and conditions, which may have exposed the company’s sterile products to microbial contamination. The FDA’s preliminary findings of sterile production practices and conditions at the site raise concerns about a lack of sterility assurance. This lack of sterility assurance has been confirmed by further FDA analysis. The FDA sampled chromium chloride injection from Balanced Solutions and identified gram-negative bacteria, a type of contaminant, in the product. Gram-negative bacteria can cause disease and many types of infection, but the Sphingobacterium thalpophilum bacteria found in the solution does not usually cause infection in humans.

http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm348787.htm