The Human and The Machine

Health

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Episode notes

Health and technology in the modern world

Julia Hobsbawm is joined this week by Jessica Morris, Founder & Chair of Our Brain Bank and Dr Natalie Banner, the ‘Understanding Patient Data’ Lead at the Wellcome Trust. They talk technology, healthcare data and the importance of hope in medicine.

For afters, we’ve got Alice Thwaite, of the Echo Chamber Club, Carl Miller of Demos and Geoff Mulgan of Nesta on techno-heaven, techno-hell and techno-shabbat.

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Key thinkers discuss health and technology

‘Health data can be used for purposes beyond individual care.’

‘When it comes to health data, unlike other data that we share, you know, social media and so on, your health data is collected in the context of a very trusted relationship between the doctor and the patient. It’s characterised by confidentiality, that is the absolute bedrock of our healthcare system – you have to be able to trust that when you are talking to your doctor, that information is being held in confidence…so your health data is very sensitive, people feel very protective over it. And so I do think it does feel slightly different to other forms of data.’

‘To use the power and the influence that patients have and the desperation patients have to power through and make tech our servant in finding a way through.’

‘My data will be pooled with that of everybody else using the app. And that will be de-identified in a secure database, and aggregated, and made freely available to any qualified glioblastoma medical researcher in the world. And as we know increasingly, patient data is the sort-of medical currency of our age. It’s very problematic in many areas, and many people are trying to crack this nut. The way that we’re cracking it, and we think this has a good chance of working, is that it’s going to be patients taking charge of their data, patients accessing it, and patients making the decisions.’

‘The solution for people like me lies absolutely in the human, but also absolutely in the tech.’

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