When data from all aspects of our lives can be relevant to our health - from our habits at the grocery store and our Google searches to our FitBit data and our medical records - can we really differentiate between big data and health big data? Will health big data be used for good, such as to improve drug safety, or ill, as in insurance discrimination? Will it disrupt health care (and the health care system) as we know it? Will it be possible to protect our health privacy? What barriers will there be to collecting and utilizing health big data? What role should law play, and what ethical concerns may arise? This timely, groundbreaking volume explores these questions and more from a variety of perspectives, examining how law promotes or discourages the use of big data in the health care sphere, and also what we can learn from other sectors.

While the law can create conflict between religion and health, it can also facilitate religious accommodation and protection of conscience. Finding this balance is critical to addressing the most pressing questions at the intersection of law, religion, and health in the United States: should physicians be required to disclose their religious beliefs to patients? How should we think about institutional conscience in the health care setting? How should health care providers deal with families with religious objections to withdrawing treatment? In this timely book, experts from a variety of perspectives and disciplines offer insight on these and other pressing questions, describing what the public discourse gets right and wrong, how policymakers might respond, and what potential conflicts may arise in the future. It should be read by academics, policymakers, and anyone else - patient or physician, secular or devout - interested in how US law interacts with health care and religion.

Transparency is a concept that is becoming increasingly lauded as a solution to a host of problems in the American health care system. Transparency initiatives show great promise, including empowering patients and other stakeholders to make more efficient decisions, improve resource allocation, and better regulate the health care industry. Nevertheless, transparency is not a cure-all for the problems facing the modern health care system. The authors of this volume present a nuanced view of transparency, exploring ways in which transparency has succeeded and ways in which transparency initiatives have room for improvement. Working at the intersection of law, medicine, ethics, and business, the book goes beyond the buzzwords to the heart of transparency's transformative potential, while interrogating its obstacles and downsides. It should be read by anyone looking for a better understanding of transparency in the health care context.

Behavioral nudges are everywhere: calorie counts on menus, automated text reminders to encourage medication adherence, a reminder bell when a driver's seatbelt isn't fastened. Designed to help people make better health choices, these reminders have become so commonplace that they often go unnoticed. In Nudging Health, forty-five experts in behavioral science and health policy from across academia, government, and private industry come together to explore whether and how these tools are effective in improving health outcomes. Behavioral science has swept the fields of economics and law through the study of nudges, cognitive biases, and decisional heuristics-but it has only recently begun to impact the conversation on health care. Nudging Health wrestles with some of the thorny philosophical issues, legal limits, and conceptual questions raised by behavioral science as applied to health law and policy. The volume frames the fundamental issues surrounding health nudges by addressing ethical questions. Does cost-sharing for health expenditures cause patients to make poor decisions? Is it right to make it difficult for people to opt out of having their organs harvested for donation when they die? Are behavioral nudges paternalistic? The contributors examine specific applications of behavioral science, including efforts to address health care costs, improve vaccination rates, and encourage better decision-making by physicians. They wrestle with questions regarding the doctor-patient relationship and defaults in healthcare while engaging with larger, timely questions of healthcare reform. Nudging Health is the first multi-voiced assessment of behavioral economics and health law to span such a wide array of issues-from the Affordable Care Act to prescription drugs. Contributors: David A. Asch, Jerry Avorn, Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby, Alexander M. Capron, Niteesh K. Choudhry, I. Glenn Cohen, Sarah Conly, Gregory Curfman, Khaled El Emam, Barbara J. Evans, Nir Eyal, Andrea Freeman, Alan M. Garber, Jonathan Gingerich, Michael Hallsworth, Jim Hawkins, David Huffman, David A. Hyman, Julika Kaplan, Aaron S. Kesselheim, Nina A. Kohn, Russell Korobkin, Jeffrey T. Kullgren, Matthew J.B. Lawrence, George Loewenstein, Holly Fernandez Lynch, Ester Moher, Abigail R. Moncrieff, David Orentlicher, Manisha Padi, Christopher T. Robertson, Ameet Sarpatwari, Aditi P. Sen, Neel Shah, Zainab Shipchandler, Anna D. Sinaiko, Donna Spruijt-Metz, Cass R. Sunstein, Thomas S. Ulen, Kristen Underhill, Kevin G. Volpp, Mark D. White, David V. Yokum, Jennifer L. Zamzow, Richard J. Zeckhauser

In its decades-long effort to assure the safety, efficacy, and security of medicines and other products, the Food and Drug Administration has struggled with issues of funding, proper associations with industry, and the balance between consumer choice and consumer protection. Today, these challenges are compounded by the pressures of globalization, the introduction of novel technologies, and fast-evolving threats to public health. With essays by leading scholars and government and private-industry experts, FDA in the Twenty-First Century addresses perennial and new problems and the improvements the agency can make to better serve the public good. The collection features essays on effective regulation in an era of globalization, consumer empowerment, and comparative effectiveness, as well as questions of data transparency, conflicts of interest, industry responsibility, and innovation policy, all with an emphasis on pharmaceuticals. The book also intervenes in the debate over off-label drug marketing and the proper role of the FDA before and after a drug goes on the market. Dealing honestly and thoroughly with the FDA's successes and failures, these essays rethink the structure, function, and future of the agency and the effect policy innovations may have on regulatory institutions abroad.

While the law can create conflict between religion and health, it can also facilitate religious accommodation and protection of conscience. Finding this balance is critical to addressing the most pressing questions at the intersection of law, religion, and health in the United States: should physicians be required to disclose their religious beliefs to patients? How should we think about institutional conscience in the health care setting? How should health care providers deal with families with religious objections to withdrawing treatment? In this timely book, experts from a variety of perspectives and disciplines offer insight on these and other pressing questions, describing what the public discourse gets right and wrong, how policymakers might respond, and what potential conflicts may arise in the future. It should be read by academics, policymakers, and anyone else - patient or physician, secular or devout - interested in how US law interacts with health care and religion.

Transparency is a concept that is becoming increasingly lauded as a solution to a host of problems in the American health care system. Transparency initiatives show great promise, including empowering patients and other stakeholders to make more efficient decisions, improve resource allocation, and better regulate the health care industry. Nevertheless, transparency is not a cure-all for the problems facing the modern health care system. The authors of this volume present a nuanced view of transparency, exploring ways in which transparency has succeeded and ways in which transparency initiatives have room for improvement. Working at the intersection of law, medicine, ethics, and business, the book goes beyond the buzzwords to the heart of transparency's transformative potential, while interrogating its obstacles and downsides. It should be read by anyone looking for a better understanding of transparency in the health care context.

When data from all aspects of our lives can be relevant to our health - from our habits at the grocery store and our Google searches to our FitBit data and our medical records - can we really differentiate between big data and health big data? Will health big data be used for good, such as to improve drug safety, or ill, as in insurance discrimination? Will it disrupt health care (and the health care system) as we know it? Will it be possible to protect our health privacy? What barriers will there be to collecting and utilizing health big data? What role should law play, and what ethical concerns may arise? This timely, groundbreaking volume explores these questions and more from a variety of perspectives, examining how law promotes or discourages the use of big data in the health care sphere, and also what we can learn from other sectors.