NEW YORK,
Feb. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The
article excerpt below from The New York
Times Opinion section, written by David B. Agus,
professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California and bestselling
author of The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World
of Health, expertly highlights the societal benefits of
healthcare information. As a leading global information and
technology services company providing the healthcare industry with
end-to-end solutions to measure and improve its performance and
public health overall, IMS Health (NYSE: IMS) supports the ideals
espoused in professor Agus' article.
ARTICLE EXCERPT:
How far would you go to protect your health records? Your
privacy matters, of course, but consider this: Mass data can inform
medicine like nothing else and save countless lives, including,
perhaps, your own.
Over the past several years, using some $30 billion in federal stimulus money, doctors
and hospitals have been installing electronic health record
systems. More than 80 percent of office-based doctors, including
me, use some form of E.H.R. These systems are supposed to make
things better by giving people easier access to their medical
information and avoiding the duplication of tests and potentially
fatal errors.
Yet neither doctors nor patients are happy. Doctors
complain about the time it takes to update digital records, while
patients worry about confidentiality. Last month the Association of
American Physicians and Surgeons went so far as to warn that
E.H.R.s could "crash" the medical system.
We need to get over it. These digital databases offer an
incredible opportunity to examine trends that will fundamentally
change how doctors treat patients. They will help develop cures,
discover new uses for drugs and better track the spread of scary
new illnesses like the Zika virus.
To view the entire article as it appears on The
New York Times web site click
here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/opinion/sunday/give-up-your-data-to-cure-disease.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=1
About IMS Health
IMS Health (NYSE: IMS) is a leading global information and
technology services company providing clients in the healthcare
industry with end-to-end solutions to measure and improve their
performance. Our 7,500 services experts connect configurable SaaS
applications to 10+ petabytes of complex healthcare data in
the IMS One™ cloud platform, delivering unique insights
into diseases, treatments, costs and outcomes. The company's 15,000
employees blend global consistency and local market knowledge
across 100 countries to help clients run their operations more
efficiently. Customers include pharmaceutical, consumer health and
medical device manufacturers and distributors, providers, payers,
government agencies, policymakers, researchers and the financial
community.
As a global leader in protecting individual patient privacy, IMS
Health uses anonymous healthcare data to deliver critical,
real-world disease and treatment insights. These insights help
biotech and pharmaceutical companies, medical researchers,
government agencies, payers and other healthcare stakeholders to
identify unmet treatment needs and understand the effectiveness and
value of pharmaceutical products in improving overall health
outcomes. Additional information is available
at www.imshealth.com.
To view the original version on PR Newswire,
visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/op-ed-give-up-your-data-to-cure-disease-300217492.html
SOURCE IMS Health