otter

A blog by Matt Webb

(emphasis mine)

If you visit a doctor virtually through a commercial app, the information you submit in the app could be used to promote a particular drug or service, says the leader of a new Canadian study involving industry insiders.

The industry insiders "were concerned that care might not be designed to be the best care for patients, but rather might be designed to increase uptake of the drug or vaccine to meet the pharmaceutical company objectives," said Dr. Sheryl Spithoff, a physician and scientist at Women's College Hospital in Toronto.

Virtual care took off as a convenient way to access health care during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing patients to consult with a doctor by videoconference, phone call or text.

But the study's researchers and others who work in the medical field have raised concerns that some virtual care companies aren't adequately protecting patients' private health information from being used by drug companies and shared with third parties that want to market products and services.

Spithoff co-authored the study in this week's BMJ Open, based on interviews with 18 individuals employed or affiliated with the Canadian virtual care industry between October 2021 and January 2022. The researchers also analyzed 31 privacy documents from the websites of more than a dozen companies.

The for-profit virtual care industry valued patient data and "appears to view data as a revenue stream," the researchers found.

One employee with a virtual care platform told the researchers that the platform, "at the behest of the pharmaceutical company, would conduct 'A/B testing' by putting out a new version of software to a percentage of patients to see if the new version improved uptake of the drug."

(emphasis mine)

If you visit a doctor virtually through a commercial app, the information you submit in the app could be used to promote a particular drug or service, says the leader of a new Canadian study involving industry insiders.

The industry insiders "were concerned that care might not be designed to be the best care for patients, but rather might be designed to increase uptake of the drug or vaccine to meet the pharmaceutical company objectives," said Dr. Sheryl Spithoff, a physician and scientist at Women's College Hospital in Toronto.

Virtual care took off as a convenient way to access health care during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing patients to consult with a doctor by videoconference, phone call or text.

But the study's researchers and others who work in the medical field have raised concerns that some virtual care companies aren't adequately protecting patients' private health information from being used by drug companies and shared with third parties that want to market products and services.

Spithoff co-authored the study in this week's BMJ Open, based on interviews with 18 individuals employed or affiliated with the Canadian virtual care industry between October 2021 and January 2022. The researchers also analyzed 31 privacy documents from the websites of more than a dozen companies.

The for-profit virtual care industry valued patient data and "appears to view data as a revenue stream," the researchers found.

One employee with a virtual care platform told the researchers that the platform, "at the behest of the pharmaceutical company, would conduct 'A/B testing' by putting out a new version of software to a percentage of patients to see if the new version improved uptake of the drug."

Could be something you grew up with, something you learned, etc.

Use cases would be regions where wifi is unreliable, on road trips or flights, etc.

I remember some paid apps from years ago, but I imagine there should be good Foss options too

Since I assume lots of people are flying this time of year

Inspired by this post:

If we're reviving everything then start with Mythbusters

What are some modern channels that do similar stuff? If episodes area available, what are older shows that might work?

Some more general examples that come to mind:

• SloMoGuys - mostly seeing things in slow motion to see how it works

• How Ridiculous - For a younger audience, but it fits

• Mark Rober - Engineered stuff

Not quite related, but maybe:

• How it's made
• XKCD's What If Channel

I don't like how my friends, family, and work contacts are mixed in to the menu when I press share. I see a random jumble of people from various apps on my device.

I want to clean it up and just keep a few apps there (ex. Copy to clipboard, open in Firefox, share to signal) and remove the rest. Is this possible anymore?

Some old threads suggest ShareDr but I can't install it since it's for an older version of Android

I didn't really notice till now, and searching around I see lots of complaints in various communities for different apps.

Turns out it's intended behavior in Android 14. The only persistent thing about it is that they don't disappear when you hit "clear all", which is something I never do because I dismiss the ones I need to instead of nuking everything.

Feels like a big step backwards and I don't understand the reasoning behind it. It was always possible to dismiss persistent ones if we really needed to (long tap etc)

Is there any workaround to get it back?

Unnecessary backstory:

I use a notification creation app to leave important TODOs as pinned notifications so I see them when I check my phone.

I've missed some and I thought I was setting them wrong. Turns out the notifications can be dismissed accidentally, making the app useless.

My use case isn't that important, I can find some other workflow. But there are other more important apps like blood sugar monitors and home security/alert apps that use persistent notifs for functionality.

Here are some of mine, see my cross-post's comments for more

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I haven't read through the entire thing yet, but so far it looks very thorough and well cited. It's aimed at healthcare decision makers in Canada but it's pretty accessible and there are sections that might be helpful to others too.

For those unfamiliar:

Canada Health Infoway is an independent, federally funded, not-for-profit organization tasked with accelerating the adoption of digital health solutions, such as electronic health records, across Canada. (wikipedia)

My personal opinion is that they're pretty good about it

Here is the description from the site:

The goals of the Toolkit for Implementers of Artificial Intelligence in Health Care are to assist health care organizations across Canada in understanding what is required to embark on an AI implementation journey, to provide specific tools to begin this journey and to ensure that organizations are prepared to adopt AI in a safe way that minimizes risk for all stakeholders.

The toolkit is divided into six modules that provide:

• Checklists to ensure that organizations can more effectively plan their activities
• Best practices, tips and recommendations related to responsible innovation
• Case studies demonstrating real-world Canadian examples of successfully implemented AI solutions
• Comprehensive footnotes and bibliographic links for further readings about AI and health care

It's frustrating when you're not understood — especially when you're trying to speak to Siri, Alexa, or another internet-connected device.

Voice datasets that power voice recognition services are owned by a handful of major companies, and they can wildly underrepresent the voices of non-dominant accents, Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, disabled people and gender marginalised people. In fact, for people speaking other global languages - there may be no datasets at all.

That’s why Mozilla launched Common Voice — the world's largest public voice database, powered by the voices of volunteer contributors. Our goal is to teach machines how real people speak.

Today, we’re asking you to contribute to Common Voice, but we want you to choose how you’ll do it. Will you donate your voice to one of our Common Voice language datasets? Or will you make a $34 donation to Mozilla to support projects like this to reclaim the internet? (Or both!)

I'd be curious about the privacy concerns, but this might help a lot with underrepresented voice data. It might come down to if someone wants more datasets for their particular voice/language more than the other concerns.

If your language/accent is already well documented, it might not help as much?