From Cells to Code

The records, results, images, and signals we leave behind as we live and get care are now collected, linked, and read together at a scale that was not possible a generation ago. That data funds hospitals, insurers, technology firms, and data companies, while the person whose body and life produced it usually has no say in its secondary commercial use and no share of what it earns.

This paper argues that the unsettled question of who owns health data does not have to be answered to close that gap, and that unjust enrichment, the claim Henrietta Lacks’s family brought, is the more useful place to start. Written by the Aquila Health team: Dr. Michael S. Hein, Alissa Bumgardner, Dr. Jaime Bland, and Jo Ohmstede.

35 pages. Enter your name and email and we will send you a copy.