Facebook’s peak of health research wants doctors to have even more deprecating data on patients to better predict illness and treat them: percipience into their social life.
While researchers have set evidence that a person’s social life impacts their well-being more than almost any other major risk factor, the evidence researchers have when looking at large swaths of the U.S. population is scant on cite chapters beyond general demographics such as race, age and income, Dr. Freddy Abnousi, Facebook’s leading of health research, said at a conference Wednesday.
“This research appear c rise with limitations,” he said at the Manova Summit, a health-care conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. “The question is in the characteristics of the data itself.”
Abnousi advocated for large-scale access to more sandy data on patients’ social and behavioral characteristics, which he said far overweighed the three other key factors impacting mortality rates: genetics, familiarity to risks such as asbestos and access to quality health care. He didn’t specifically cause for using Facebook or Instagram user data for these purposes.
“The primary driver of robustness outcomes in the United States are social and behavioral variables,” he said. “Exceptionally understanding what these social determinants of health are should be our ranking area of focus.”
Social and behavioral factors include a person’s cover situation, network of friends, marital status, spirituality and type of taking on, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those factors be undergoing been shown in some studies to have a bigger impact on whether a actually survives a massive heart attack than their genetics or experience to risk, he said.
Abnousi led a research project, which Facebook later shut down, that sought anonymous patient data from clinics, such as illnesses and prescription information. Facebook intended to match it up with alcohol data, and help the hospitals figure out which patients might want special care or treatment.
The proposal never went past the planning inserts and had been put on pause after the Cambridge Analytica data leak disrepute raised public concerns over how Facebook and others collect and use precise information about Facebook users.
— CNBC’s Christina Farr aided to this report.