Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics : CQ : the international journal of healthcare ethics committees
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Electronic health records, data sharing, big data, data mining, and secondary use are enabling exciting opportunities for improving health and healthcare while also exacerbating privacy concerns. Two court cases about selling prescription data, the Sorrell case in the U. ⋯ These interwoven issues involve discussion of big data benefits and harms and touch on common dualities of the individual versus the aggregate or the public interest, research (or, more broadly, innovation) versus privacy, individual versus institutional power, identification versus identity and authentication, and virtual versus real individuals and contextualized information. Transparency, flexibility, and accountability are needed for assessing appropriate, judicious, and ethical data uses and users, as some are more compatible with societal norms and values than others.