At the current population of the United States (311,591,917), .03% nets us 93,477 people. That’s a massive clinical research cohort - more than 10x bigger than Framingham. My instinct is that we’ll do better than that, but even if we don’t, that’s a big enough number to change the game of mathematical health modeling.

You see, the secret sauce of the commons is asymmetry. A small number of people making an unreasonable choice, a choice to share, to be digitally naked - that’s all it takes. But if we don’t control the privacy over our own health records, that small number will never get the chance to make that choice.

So I view this study as unmitigated Good News. It means that people are going to get more and more pissed that they don’t have control, and that makes it more and more likely that they get control. Patient empowerment is the first step on the road to open data. It doesn’t take all of us. It just takes all of some of us.