/2018

Amazon, AI and Medical Records: Do the Benefits Outweigh the Risks? - Knowledge Wharton
▻http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/amazon-medical-records

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Last month, Amazon unveiled a service based on AI and machine-learning technology that could comb through patient medical records and extract valuable insights. It was seen as a game changer that could alleviate the administrative burden of doctors, introduce new treatments, empower patients and potentially lower health care costs. But it also carries risks to patient data privacy that calls for appropriate regulation, according to Wharton and other experts.

Branded Comprehend Medical, the Amazon Web Services offering aims “to understand and analyze the information that is often trapped in free-form, unstructured medical text, such as hospital admission notes or patient medical histories.” Essentially, it is a natural language processing service that pores through medical text for insights into disease conditions, medications and treatment outcomes from patient notes and other electronic health records.

The new service is Amazon’s latest foray into the health care sector. In June, the company paid $1 billion to buy online pharmacy PillPack, a Boston-based startup that specializes in packing monthly supplies of medicines to chronically ill patients. In January, Amazon teamed up with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase to form a health care alliance that aims to lower costs and improve the quality of medical care for their employees.

“Health care, like everything else, is becoming more of an information-based industry, and data is the gold standard — and Amazon knows as well as anyone how to handle and analyze data,” said Robert Field, Wharton lecturer in health care management who is also professor of health management and policy at Drexel University. “It’s a $3.5 trillion industry and 18% of our economy, so who wouldn’t want a piece of that?”

AI offers “enormous” promise when it comes to bringing in new and improved treatments for patient conditions, such as in the area of radiology, added Hempstead. Machine learning also potentially enables the continual improvement of treatment models, such as identifying people who could participate in clinical trials. Moreover, Amazon’s service could “empower a consumer to be more in charge of their own health and maybe be more active consumer of medical services that might be beneficial to their health,” she said.

On the flip side, it also could enable insurers to refuse to enroll patients that they might see as too risky, Hempstead said. Insurers are already accessing medical data and using technology in pricing their products for specific markets, and the Amazon service might make it easier for them to have access to such data, she noted.

#Santé_publique #Données_médicales #Amazon #Intelligence_artificielle

Why the Cambridge Analytica Scandal Is a Watershed Moment for Social Media - Knowledge Wharton
▻http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/fallout-cambridge-analytica

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“We’re experiencing a watershed moment with regard to social media,” said Aral. “People are now beginning to realize that social media is not just either a fun plaything or a nuisance. It can have potentially real consequences in society.”

The Cambridge Analytica scandal underscores how little consumers know about the potential uses of their data, according to Berman. He recalled a scene in the film Minority Report where Tom Cruise enters a mall and sees holograms of personally targeted ads. “Online advertising today has reached about the same level of sophistication, in terms of targeting, and also some level of prediction,” he said. “It’s not only that the advertiser can tell what you bought in the past, but also what you may be looking to buy.”

Consumers are partially aware of that because they often see ads that show them products they have browsed, or websites they have visited, and these ads “chase them,” Berman said. “What consumers may be unaware of is how the advertiser determines what they’re looking to buy, and the Cambridge Analytica exposé shows a tiny part of this world.”

A research paper that Nave recently co-authored captures the potential impact of the kind of work Cambridge Analytica did for the Trump campaign. “On the one hand, this form of psychological mass persuasion could be used to help people make better decisions and lead healthier and happier lives,” it stated. “On the other hand, it could be used to covertly exploit weaknesses in their character and persuade them to take action against their own best interest, highlighting the potential need for policy interventions.”

Nave said the Cambridge Analytica scandal exposes exactly those types of risks, even as they existed before the internet era. “Propaganda is not a new invention, and neither is targeted messaging in marketing,” he said. “What this scandal demonstrates, however, is that our online behavior exposes a lot about our personality, fears and weaknesses – and that this information can be used for influencing our behavior.”

In Golbeck’s research projects involving the use of algorithms, she found that people “are really shocked that we’re able to get these insights like what your personality traits are, what your political preferences are, how influenced you can be, and how much of that data we’re able to harvest.”

Even more shocking, perhaps, is how easy it is to find the data. “Any app on Facebook can pull the kind of data that Cambridge Analytica did – they can [do so] for all of your data and the data of all your friends,” said Golbeck. “Even if you don’t install any apps, if your friends use apps, those apps can pull your data, and then once they have that [information] they can get these extremely deep, intimate insights using artificial intelligence, about how to influence you, how to change your behavior.” But she draws a line there: “It’s one thing if that’s to get you to buy a pair of shoes; it’s another thing if it’s to change the outcome of an election.”

“Facebook has tried to play both sides of [the issue],” said Golbeck. She recalled a study by scientists from Facebook and the University of California, San Diego, that claimed social media networks could have “a measurable if limited influence on voter turnout,” as The New York Times reported. “On one hand, they claim that they can have a big influence; on the other hand they want to say ‘No, no, we haven’t had any impact on this.’ So they are going to have a really tough act to play here, to actually justify what they’re claiming on both sides.”

Golbeck called for ways to codify how researchers could ethically go about their work using social media data, “and give people some of those rights in a broader space that they don’t have now.” Aral expected the solution to emerge in the form of “a middle ground where we learn to use these technologies ethically in order to enhance our society, our access to information, our ability to cooperate and coordinate with one another, and our ability to spread positive social change in the world.” At the same time, he advocated tightening use requirements for the data, and bringing back “the notion of informed consent and consent in a meaningful way, so that we can realize the promise of social media while avoiding the peril.”

Historically, marketers could collect individual data, but with social platforms, they can now also collect data about a user’s social contacts, said Berman. “These social contacts never gave permission explicitly for this information to be collected,” he added. “Consumers need to realize that by following someone or connecting to someone on social media, they also expose themselves to marketers who target the followed individual.”

In terms of safeguards, Berman said it is hard to know in advance what a company will do with the data it collects. “If they use it for normal advertising, say toothpaste, that may be legitimate, and if they use it for political advertising, as in elections, that may be illegitimate. But the data itself is the same data.”

According to Berman, most consumers, for example, don’t know that loyalty cards are used to track their behavior and that the data is sold to marketers. Would they stop using these cards if they knew? “I am not sure,” he said. “Research shows that people in surveys say they want to maintain their privacy rights, but when asked how much they’re willing to give up in customer experience – or to pay for it – the result is not too much. In other words, there’s a difference between how we care about privacy as an idea, and how much we’re willing to give up to maintain it.”

Golbeck said tools exist for users to limit the amount of data they let reside on social media platforms, including one called Facebook Timeline Cleaner, and a “tweet delete” feature on Twitter. _ “One way that you can make yourself less susceptible to some of this kind of targeting is to keep less data there, delete stuff more regularly, and treat it as an ephemeral platform, _ ” she said.

Mais est-ce crédible ? Les médias sociaux sont aussi des formes d’archives personnelles.

#Facebook #Cambridge_analytica

Seeing Red: Can a Brand Trademark a Signature Color? - Knowledge Wharton
▻http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/louboutin-red-soles

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“Every time we think about trademarking, we start with the brand name and the logo. Those are the things that companies want to protect first,” Cesareo said. “But, especially in luxury, there are other things that consumers come to recognize as a symbol or a signature for the brand that need to be protected. For Christian Louboutin, the red sole is the signature of the shoe. It makes sense that he wants to protect it in every jurisdiction in the world. You need to understand that for a consumer, the red sole means something. It signals luxury, it signals quality, it’s a status symbol. It signals sexiness in general.”

Cesareo referenced the hit song “Bodak Yellow” by Cardi B., who raps about buying “red bottoms” as a benchmark of her own success.

Gerhardt, who is working on an article about color ownership, said color works so well in branding, yet few companies try to protect that commercial distinctiveness.

“Even though color is so expressive, 80% of the marks that have been registered in the last 25-year period are words; they’re text. Another 20% are designs,” she said. “If you try to make a pie chart of all the brands that claim color in terms of trying to register them as a trademark, it is .02% It is such a small sliver in my pie chart, you can barely see it.”

Copying a design is a form of piracy. In this case, Van Haren is trying to steal the status and appeal of the original, according to Cesareo. “Even though they weren’t knockoffs legally speaking, they were still pirating a design that Louboutin felt needed to be protected.”

Losing the case could be disastrous for Louboutin because it’s already one of the most counterfeited brands in the world, according to Cesareo. A few years ago, a shipment seized at the port in Los Angeles yielded more than 20,000 pairs of knock-off Louboutins, which would have been worth about $18 million if they were real.

“This could cause a real dilution of the brand,” she said. “Not just knock-offs of the brand itself, but the second that this becomes very widespread and everybody starts wearing red-soled shoes, they lose that scarcity, that status symbol. They’re going to lose their distinctive power. It doesn’t just mean that knock-off sales are going to go up, but sales of the original, authentic brand are going to go down.”

But Karol said the European court’s decision reflects a mindfulness of countervailing concerns. “You don’t want later designers to be worried about putting red on their shoes. We want red to be free for everybody to use. We want to keep that freedom and not chill these designers into worrying about how they are going to use it exactly.”

#Marques_déposées #Propriété_intellectuelle

Why Consumers Lose in the Big Pharma Wars - Knowledge Wharton
▻http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/why-consumers-lose-in-the-big-pharma-wars

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Same Drug, Different Packaging

Drug companies make significant profits as long as their patents hold, preventing generics from entering the market. But they have found a clever way to extend patent expiration by “tweaking” the medications. Feldman cited a 10-year study of prescriptions sold in the U.S. that showed how companies extend the “protection cliff” by adding exclusivities, additional patents and other minor changes.

“Rather than creating new medicines, pharmaceutical companies are recycling and repurposing old ones,” she said. “Every year, at least 74% of the drugs associated with new patents were not new drugs coming on the market, but they were existing drugs. In other words, we are lavishing these rewards not on exciting new innovations but on tweaks to things that already exist.” She added that extending the protection cliff is particularly pronounced among blockbuster drugs. “Of the roughly 100 best-selling drugs, almost 80% extended their protection cliff at least once, and half extended the protection cliff more. We have lots of examples of what I like to call serial offenders.”

The Hatch-Waxman Act, enacted in 1984, was designed to allow rapid entry of generic drugs into the market as soon as patents ended. For a long time, the law was successful at bringing competitors into the fold, which brought down prices by up to 80%. The law also allows a drug company to challenge a patent. If the challenger wins, they are rewarded by being the only generic on the market for six months.

“That’s intended to help clear out weak and inappropriate patents,” Feldman said. “Unfortunately, the drug companies have taken this system and twisted it around.” She said patent holders are settling with challengers in what is known as “pay for delay” agreements. In other words, they pay that first generic to stay off the market.

“So, the branded drug stays on the market at a very high price. The generic gets paid a little of that monopoly rent to stay off the market. And when the generic comes to market, it still gets its six-month exclusivity,” she said. “It’s a win-win for the branded drug. It’s a win for the generic drug. Consumers and society lose. These things push out the horizon at which a generic drug would enter the market.”

Feldman believes the best way to fix the broken system is to simplify it. “Complexity breeds opportunity. And the drug industry is adept at exploiting that complexity. A simpler system makes it much more difficult to play games.” She advocates legal changes that would remove incentives and limit companies to one period of exclusivity on a chemical formulation with no allowance for extensions. She also calls for greater transparency in the process.

#Big_Pharma #Médicaments #Marché #Génériques