ArticleJAMA network open2025
The Primary Care Medical Record Industry in Canada and Its Data Collection and Commercialization Practices.
Article in JAMA network open, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- The influence of "America First" policies on Canada's health security and sovereignty.Lancet regional health. Americas · 2026Article
- Trust and trade: patient perspectives on the ethics of real-world data monetisation.Frontiers in health services · 2026Article
- Protecting patient privacy in tabular synthetic health data: a regulatory perspective.NPJ digital medicine · 2025Review
- Artificial Intelligence for Cardiovascular Care in Action: From Learning to Implementation in Health Systems.JACC. Advances · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Importance: Massive volumes of health data flow to commercial data brokers worldwide, yet little empirical research has examined how this industry functions and the implications for patients. Objective: To describe and analyze the primary care medical record industry in Canada and its data collection and commercialization practices. Design, Setting, and Participants: This qualitative study of the Canadian primary care health data industry used situational analysis, a grounded theory methodology. Data sources included semistructured interviews of individuals affiliated with the commercial health data industry from May 2022 to May 2023 and publicly available documents. Data were analyzed from May 2022 to May 2024. Main Outcomes and Measures: Individual semistructured interviews and relevant publicly available documents were analyzed to gain an understanding of data collection and commercialization practices in the primary care record industry. The analysis involved a continuous and iterative process of data collection and analysis, theoretical sampling, data-driven coding, and creation of theoretical concepts. Results: A total of 19 interviews were conducted and 22 documents were sampled. Study participants described the primary care medical record industry in Canada as consisting of complex reciprocal relationships between commercial health data brokers, physicians, for-profit chains of primary care clinics, and pharmaceutical companies. In an emerging vertically integrated business model, the data broker brought the primary care clinics and physicians in house as a clinical subsidiary, thus obtaining more control over clinical practices. Participants understood the primary care medical record industry as having potential to transform patient care, but-because of financial considerations-also tied to pharmaceutical industry interests. According to participants, patients were not involved in decisions related to how their records were collected and used. Conclusions and Relevance: This qualitative study found that each entity within the Canadian primary care medical record industry contributes to, and benefits from, the conversion of patient medical records into commercial assets. The industry's activities reflect the pharmaceutical companies' interests. Patients are notably absent from decision-making; thus, the industry's activities may not reflect their values or interests.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.