<story><title>Mayo Clinic to partner with Google</title><url>https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/customers/how-google-and-mayo-clinic-will-transform-the-future-of-healthcare</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>elpakal</author><text>Sorry for the cynicism, but this worries me.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; This strategic partnership will combine Google’s cloud and AI capabilities and Mayo’s world-leading clinical expertise to improve the health of people—and entire communities—through the transformative impact of understanding insights at scale. Ultimately, we will work together to solve humanity’s most serious and complex medical challenges.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sorry but this is just pure silicon valley speak.  Are Mayo&amp;#x27;s patients really going to know what Google is doing with their clinical data?  When I hear &amp;quot;partnering with Google to create machine-learning models for serious and complex disease&amp;quot;, I have a hard time believing Mayo patients know what they are signing away when they consent to this (if at all, which is not mentioned?)</text></comment>
<story><title>Mayo Clinic to partner with Google</title><url>https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/customers/how-google-and-mayo-clinic-will-transform-the-future-of-healthcare</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>disabled</author><text>I &amp;quot;love&amp;quot; how Google just throws in &amp;quot;rare diseases&amp;quot; in to this, via their press release, as somebody who lives with 2 rare diseases that affect my peripheral nervous system. Actually, one of the diseases I have was discovered in the early 2000s on NIH grant funds at the Mayo Clinic.&lt;p&gt;This sounds wild, but it is true: Rare diseases are an absolute cash cow, and everyone should watch this. Our healthcare system in the US will be unsustainable if orphan drugs are not regulated (Which is why I naturalized as an European Union citizen, in addition to being American. I fret and worry about getting proper access to medical care every single day.): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;23&amp;#x2F;the-weekly&amp;#x2F;rare-diseases-orphan-drugs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;23&amp;#x2F;the-weekly&amp;#x2F;rare-diseases-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;(I do not believe that healthcare for all is unsustainable, but an unregulated free market will make it unsustainable.)&lt;p&gt;Just in case anyone was wondering, it is common to have a rare disease, and they are unfathomly expensive to have. In the US, the definition of rare disease (which really should be called &amp;quot;orphan conditions&amp;quot; based on the law) is tied to &amp;quot;orphan drugs&amp;quot; which in theory can collectively benefit 10% of the general population. There are a ton of orphan drugs being approved at the moment, which cost between hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to millions per year, in the US. The European estimate on rare diseases is more realistic and 6-8% of the general population has a rare disease.&lt;p&gt;So, do not think think that it cannot happen to you. You are naive to believe otherwise.</text></comment>