This NPR piece was done on “Science Friday” and featured a conversation between Ira Flatow, and guest Dr. Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft Research scientist. The discussion follows the role of increasing internet searches for health-related topics in discovering critical information about the interactions between drugs. Horvitz and his team were able to find a connection between Pravastatin, a drug used to lower cholesterol, and Paroxetine, an antidepressant. When combined, these drugs can cause hyperglycemia. It is noted that these two drugs are both quite common and yet no drug testing had proven the adverse side effects of combining the two. While Horvitz clarifies that in this case, another study at Stanford had found the connection between the two drugs, Horvitz’s team aimed to see if they could have predicted what the study found through looking at search history. As a result, Horvitz went back to a year before the Stanford study, 2010, and, with consent, conducted an analysis that showed similar findings. Thus, this technology could be used in the future too, without scientific study, predict negative interactions between medicine.

While this specific incidence does not necessarily pose a significant ethical question with regards to privacy, as consent was asked, how technology is used in this application does bring about some issues. For example, while we hold Microsoft to a high standard because we know the company, what about other companies using similar technologies, both for good and bad? Will privacy always be prioritized?

The article also highlights the current issue in the U.S., and around the world, of “cyberchondria,” which is a phenomenon where people tend to look to the internet to answer what their symptoms mean, only to escalate their symptoms to the worst extreme. Perhaps with the transition to more forms of e-health, this cyberchondria issue will become less of a problem.