Further, Big Data is being driven by health care consumers themselves, particularly younger generations for whom privacy is largely anachronistic, making "patient sensoring" by insurers actually not that hard to achieve, he said.
"There is this psyche out there of people who really want to be monitored," said Dr. Lesnick, citing the ascendency of smartphone watches and humidity sensor apps that allow users to track their exercise performance. These technologies suggest a future of vastly more mobile health or "mHealth" options.
"The Holy Grail is to get the information passively, with sensors all over your body," Dr. Lesnick said.
The encounter between privacy issues and advances in technology begs the questions: If privacy becomes a commodity, will health insurers profit from selling it? And, if our individual data adds to the collective knowledge base, is it our responsibility to give it away for free?
Up-and-coming generations may live according to an ethos whereby "all data should be out there, and it should be completely transparent," Dr. Lesnick said. "But is transparency always a good thing? I don’t know the answer."