Health and Big Data: An Ethical Framework for Health Information Collection by Corporate Wellness Programs

This essay details the resurgence of wellness program as employed by large corporations with the aim of reducing healthcare costs. The essay narrows in on a discussion of how Big Data collection practices are being utilized in wellness programs and the potential negative impact on the worker in regards to privacy and employment discrimination. The essay offers an ethical framework to be adopted by wellness program vendors in order to conduct wellness programs that would achieve cost-saving goals without undue burdens on the worker. The essay also offers some innovative approaches to wellness that may well better serve the goals of healthcare cost reduction.

[1]  P. Conrad.  Wellness in the work place: potentials and pitfalls of work-site health promotion. , 1987, The Milbank quarterly.

[2]  Dmitry Khodyakov,et al.  Workplace Wellness Programs Study: Final Report. , 2013, Rand health quarterly.

[3]  D. Blumenthal.  Employer-sponsored health insurance in the United States--origins and implications. , 2006, The New England journal of medicine.

[4]  T. Pope.  The Slow Transition of U.S. Law Toward a Greater Emphasis on Prevention , 2011 .

[5]  J. Cawley.  The Affordable Care Act permits greater financial rewards for weight loss: a good idea in principle, but many practical concerns remain. , 2014, Journal of policy analysis and management : [the journal of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management].

[6]  Nicolas P Terry.  Big data proxies and health privacy exceptionalism. , 2014, Health matrix.

[7]  M. Rothstein.  Rethinking the Meaning of Public Health , 2002, The Journal of law, medicine & ethics : a journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics.

[8]  Incentives for Nondiscriminatory Wellness Programs in Group Health Plans , 2014 .

[9]  S. Heymsfield,et al.  Does body mass index adequately convey a patient's mortality risk? , 2013, JAMA.

[10]  Ifeoma Ajunwa,et al.  Limitless Worker Surveillance , 2016 .

[11]  Dan Rubenstein.  The Emergence of Mandatory Wellness Programs in the United States: Welcoming, or Worrisome? , 2009 .

[12]  Lindsay F. Wiley,et al.  Who's Your Nanny? Choice, Paternalism and Public Health in the Age of Personal Responsibility , 2013, The Journal of law, medicine & ethics : a journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics.

[13]  Jessica L. Roberts,et al.  Healthism and the Law of Employment Discrimination , 2013 .

[14]  Tero Karppi,et al.  Our metrics, ourselves: A hundred years of self-tracking from the weight scale to the wrist wearable device , 2015 .

[15]  Frank A. Pasquale.  The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information , 2015 .

[16]  Ifeoma Ajunwa.  Genetic Testing Meets Big Data: Torts and Contract Law Issues , 2014 .

[17]  J. James,et al.  Workplace-based health and wellness programs: the intersection of aging, work, and health. , 2015, The Gerontologist.

[18]  C. Lavie.  The Obesity Paradox: When Thinner Means Sicker and Heavier Means Healthier , 2014 .

[19]  L. Andrews,et al.  Privacy Policies of Android Diabetes Apps and Sharing of Health Information. , 2016, JAMA.

[20]  L. Klautzer,et al.  Can We Legally Pay People for Being Good? A Review of Current Federal and State Law on Wellness Program Incentives , 2012, Inquiry : a journal of medical care organization, provision and financing.

[21]  Kyle Kubler.  The Black Box Society: the secret algorithms that control money and information , 2016 .