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Javier Martinez Elicegui

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Health Information Donor

Blood or organs donor is a common actitudes in most countries. Based on these concepts and adopting them to the moderm medicine where statistics are a key factor (data mining analysis to identify evidences for further biological studies), I propose the information donor as a way of safe lifes.

Modern medical studies are demanding more and larger population samples with appropiated distributions according historical record, localization, genetic characteristics, etc. Getting all these data is expensive and complex. What better contribution each of us could make than provide/donate our own information: medical record, habits: meals, sports, smoking, drinking, peculiarities of our family, etc through internet.

In a nutshell, is the willingness to offer in a strict confidence our personal information that may be useful por medical research. All these information could be in a database accessible to the scientific community, serving as the basis for selection of sample population to submit more concrete new forms / queries of information relating to particular studies.

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Topics: donation e-health solidarity
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  • Barry Palmer 50+

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    Aug 15 2012: In the USA, this kind of information is highly desired by the medical insurance companies.

    Personally, I would not trust any organization with my medical records. Regardless of their policies or promises today, institutions change over time, and once they have the information there is no way to take it away with certainty..
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      Javier Martinez Elicegui

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      Aug 15 2012: I think could be an official initiative (no private) to overcome the initial fears (e.g.: depending on the ONU)

      Other option could be if important companies (Google, Apple, IBM) could create a Foundation and lead this altruistic initiative to improve the world and (in an indirect way) obtain a better brand image.

      I think it is needed a business model that guarantees a global interest: to people, to companies and to foundation members.
      - Donor people could have the proud to put a sand grain to solve a health big problem (like in wikipedia)
      - General people take advantage of the science advance
      - Companies can obtain information for their researches and must pay a just account to maintain infrastructures.
      - Companies, who are foundation members, take the honour (and image) to contribute to this initiative that could change the world we know.
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    James Zhang 30+

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    Aug 12 2012: I think they're already trying to do this by trying to making health and medical information open-sourced. I guess this would also apply to each individual's health cases... only by consent of the individuals.
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