[CamperBob2]

"regulations slow innovation" is not a valid reason to ignore any regulation one finds annoying.

Eh. We'd still be stuck with taxis, Prohibition, and 55 MPH speed limits if we followed this dictum. Not to mention paying taxes to the King of England.

[poisonborz]

Paying taxes to the King of England = companies should have unrestricted access to medical data of millions of people?

[fnordpiglet]

I struggle with why this access is an issue. If the health data were used in making insurance decisions, marketing, employment, or any sort of way that has a personal impact on the people in the data set then absolutely not. But presumably personally identifying information is in no way relevant to the task of training models, so what specifically is the concern? Medical data is a constellation of observations over time. Why is this particularly sensitive, especially if it’s not associated with any specific identifiable person?

HIPPA has seemed to create a view that anything related to medical care is the most secret information in all the world, when in fact it’s pretty useless to anyone but yourself and people that want your money in some way that exploits your health situation. HIPPA itself only really erects barriers between your health data and disclosure to insurers and providers without your consent.

[CamperBob2]

Suitably anonymized, I'd say "Yes." You can't make progress in any field without data. Usually, the more data the better, as long as it's good data. If archaic, misguided laws have to be broken to save lives, well... so be it.

The real trick is keeping personally-identifiable data out of the hands of insurance companies.