More than a decade ago, Ken Mandl was on a call with a pharmaceutical company and the leader of a social network for people with diabetes. The drug maker was hoping to use the platform to encourage its members to get a certain lab test.
The test could determine a patient’s need for a helpful drug. But in that moment, said Mandl, director of the computational health informatics program at Boston Children’s Hospital, “I could see this focus on a biomarker as a way to increase sales of the product.” To describe the phenomenon, he coined the term “biomarkup”: the way commercial interests can influence the creation, adoption, and interpretation of seemingly objective measures of medical status.
These days, Mandl has been thinking about how the next generation of quantified outputs in health could be gamed: artificial intelligence tools.
This article is exclusive to STAT+ subscribers
Unlock this article — and get additional analysis of the technologies disrupting health care — by subscribing to STAT+.
Already have an account? Log in
To read the rest of this story subscribe to STAT+.
