May 2014
Featured in this insight: Medical & healthcare, International
Almost 90 per cent of Americans would make personal health data available to researchers: A survey of 1,001 Americans over the age of eighteen, conducted by research firm Kelton and healthcare communications firm Makovsky Health, shows that almost nine in ten Americans would make their personal health data available to researchers to help them better understand a disease or to improve care and treatment options.
Within this group, a quarter (26%) of consumers would share regardless of whether data were anonymous, a fifth (23%) would share if they could control which data were anonymous, and two fifths (40%) would share if promised that all data would remain anonymous.
A separate study from PatientsLikeMe (PLM) found that the majority (94%) of adults would be willing to share their health information on social media if it were to help doctors improve care, even though a majority of those surveyed also understand the data could be used negatively.
An important procedural difference between the two studies is that in the Kelton and Makovsky Survey, the respondents were given the option to anonymize their data – over half of the participants did so.
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