Re: [projectvrm] Microsoft's Personal Health Care Records

["Adriana Lukas" < >]

I was just reading this post:
http://www.johnon.com/413/health-vault.html - found via google search
of "microsoft health vault" - and his objections reinforce Alan's
argument. I think that anything resembling a centralised database is
less secure than a distributed approach. Centralise databases or
platforms are suspect both on security and privacy grounds even though
they may be initiated by trustworthy party (which is not the case of
the Health Vault I hasten to add. :-))

So, any framework or structure that is meant to a) provide a place for
individuals to create, gather, manage and share data and b) because
its openness, allow a degree of aggregation, connectivity and
ultimately expose individuals to potential data-mining (whether the
more private among us like it or not!) has to have in-built checks and
balances.

The idea that any data online can truly be secure is moot. I remember
Ben Laurie www.links.org mentioning in a conversation about VRM that
the trick is to build security in a way that you can trust the
untrustable. Will need to revisit that point... :)

The web has changed the nature of data at least in two ways. It
commoditised data and as a result the context in which the data exists
is becoming at least as important as the data itself. This is where
the 'relationship' bit in VRM comes. It would sustain the context and
make the data more valuable. Hopefully, it will make crude attempts to
harvest, mine and analyse data without it irrelevant or inadequate
(see behavioural targeting et al).

For me VRM is about levelling the playing field and strengthening the
shift in the balance of power between the individual and organisations
that the internet and the web made possible. It is about transactions
and commerce but, as Doc often points us, that's only one third of the
story. Conversations, relationships and transactions... made more
valuable, sustainable and fairer for it. So businesses can be involved
from the word go but they will need to respect the drive of
individuals to redress the existing (lack of) balance of power.

Finally,
"On the direct win-win issue, I think one of the major points is that,
however easy and hassle-free we would like it to be, creating a
robust, rich, up-to-date, accurate personal database is an investment
- of time, effort, attention and so on. For this to happen,
individuals need to be confident that they will earn a decent return
on their investment. Control is one aspect of this personal ROI. There
is less incentive for me to invest in a database which is effectively
held under the control of a third party and which looks like it could
easily become more of an asset for them than it is for me. To me,
Microsoft's HealthVault looks like it has been designed more with
Microsoft's ROI in mind than the individual's. (Surprise!)"

Excellent point, Alan, just what I needed. Thanks! :)

Love the idea of a personal ROI, which will come as an unpleasant
shock for the ROI obsessed executives - you mean 'consumers'  have an
idea of a return that is not determined by our marketing?!!

Adriana

On 08/10/2007, 

 
 
<
 >
 wrote:
>
>
> I think Adriana's point is very important: zero-ing on the win-wins
> generated by empowering the individual the data manager.
>
> On the security issue, there is the point that distributed data is much
> harder to hack than centralised data - or to be more precise, hackers are
> incentivised thousands of times over to focus on big, aggregated honeypots
> rather than 'isolated' bits of data held by individuals. The challenge is
> how to create such a distributed approach while also allowing for this data
> to be aggregated for specific purposes and also keeping all the security and
> other standards of 'big' centralised data. I think people like Paoga.com are
> already working on this.
>
> On the direct win-win issue, I think one of the major points is that,
> however easy and hassle-free we would like it to be, creating a robust,
> rich, up-to-date, accurate personal database is an investment - of time,
> effort, attention and so on. For this to happen, individuals need to be
> confident that they will earn a decent return on their investment. Control
> is one aspect of this personal ROI. There is less incentive for me to invest
> in a database which is effectively held under the control of a third party
> and which looks like it could easily become more of an asset for them than
> it is for me. To me, Microsoft's HealthVault looks like it has been designed
> more with Microsoft's ROI in mind than the individual's. (Surprise!)
>
> The danger of Microsoft's approach is that even though it zeroes in on many
> of the issues that we have raised,  it might never get off the ground and
> reach critical mass because not enough people will be confident there's a
> big enough ROI in it for them.
>
> So, in this emerging area, big corporates have got to get their heads round
> a different way of thinking about win-win: that "we will get our ROI only if
> we help individuals get their ROI from investing in and using their own
> personal data assets. If we help them improve their ROIs, then they will see
> the sense in investing in a relationship with us".
>
> Good business-to-business marketers have understood this type of logic for
> donkey's years. But currently, it is beyond the comprehension of most
> consumer marketers.
>
> Alan M


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