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Unpatients—why patients should own their medical data

For the benefits of digital medicine to be fully realized, we need not only to find a shared home for personal health data but also to give individuals the right to own them.

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Figure 1: The medical data ownership engine.
Figure 2: The timeline for electronic medical data hacks in the United States of over 1 million individuals.

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks to J. Robinson, N. DiNiro and D. Maizenberg, members of the UnPatient team, for assistance; US National Institutes of Health grant NIH/NCATS 8 UL1 TR001114 for supporting E.J.T.; M. Miller for preparation; and J. Hightower for assistance with graphics.

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Correspondence to Eric J Topol.

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Kish, L., Topol, E. Unpatients—why patients should own their medical data. Nat Biotechnol 33, 921–924 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3340

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