[jfim]

It's just data analysis, the same way that other retailers do it for product recommendations. The only difference with more anodyne correlations (eg. people who buy cereal are also more likely to buy milk) is that they're using anonymized pharmacy data.

[influx]

How is it anonymized if they are correlating it with how much food they are buying? Even if it is anonymized, I'm shocked healthcare data is shared?

[nonameiguess]

It's not being shared. Walmart is both the pharmacy and the grocery store. If you use the same account to buy drugs and food from them, they can see that. Nobody needed to give them the data and they aren't giving it to anyone else.

[valarauko]

Still seems fishy. Does the pharmacy section not require HIPAA and siloing off from the regular consumer data?

[SkyPuncher]

HIPAA doesn’t require that. Or not in the sense you are suggesting.

This seems like a pretty easy analysis while stating in the confine of HIPAA.

Your basically looking at two data points:

* is [drug] buyer

* total grocer spend

There is no PHI in that analysis and no way for there to be PHI.

[callalex]

Collecting anonymous data and sharing data with third parties are entirely orthogonal issues.

[jfim]

It could be transaction level data (eg. credit card ending in 1234 bought X at store Y).

It's anonymized in the sense that one can't know what medication Joe Blow takes just by looking at the dataset, even if their transaction data is part of it.

If such analysis is concerning, then one can choose to buy their medication elsewhere or pay cash without any rewards card.

[fragmede]

It could also be face recognition of the person using security footage, no?