Also, higher-level: how should potential customers check if their provider is already on Prime?
Finally, my first question when I see a service that will help me with sensitive, private data for free is: who is paying for this? Maybe the providers are paying; maybe the plan is to sell "non-personally-identifiable" data; maybe there will be ads and/or targeted 3rd party offers; but if the site is secretive about its business model, I assume the worst. In this case the privacy policy seems to suggest the latter two options, which are bad enough for email hosting, but really quite dangerous for medical data. The process of pseudonymizing medical data is difficult and necessarily imperfect; so the consumers of any pseudonymized data need to be responsible parties.
Thanks for the note about the error, should be fixed soon.
Good point about letting people check the full list of providers!
To the question about business model, all three of us agree wholeheartedly that free services rightfully bring a certain level of skepticism. All things considered we don't think it would be possible to charge for the app, but do feel there are not enough truly consumer-focused offerings in the health space. So we are thinking hard about what the revenue model will be. We don't have any plans to sell info in any regard and are under the impression that would require a direct opt-in from consumers if that offers any solace.
"We don't have any plans to sell info in any regard and are under the impression that would require a direct opt-in from consumers if that offers any solace."
This is interesting. Are you then not considering exposing APIs to anonymous data or such like?
Comments
homepage error: link for "Not a member of a current Prime provider?" is http://stayinyourprime.com/%10#providers
Also, higher-level: how should potential customers check if their provider is already on Prime?
Finally, my first question when I see a service that will help me with sensitive, private data for free is: who is paying for this? Maybe the providers are paying; maybe the plan is to sell "non-personally-identifiable" data; maybe there will be ads and/or targeted 3rd party offers; but if the site is secretive about its business model, I assume the worst. In this case the privacy policy seems to suggest the latter two options, which are bad enough for email hosting, but really quite dangerous for medical data. The process of pseudonymizing medical data is difficult and necessarily imperfect; so the consumers of any pseudonymized data need to be responsible parties.
Thanks for the note about the error, should be fixed soon.
Good point about letting people check the full list of providers!
To the question about business model, all three of us agree wholeheartedly that free services rightfully bring a certain level of skepticism. All things considered we don't think it would be possible to charge for the app, but do feel there are not enough truly consumer-focused offerings in the health space. So we are thinking hard about what the revenue model will be. We don't have any plans to sell info in any regard and are under the impression that would require a direct opt-in from consumers if that offers any solace.
"We don't have any plans to sell info in any regard and are under the impression that would require a direct opt-in from consumers if that offers any solace."
This is interesting. Are you then not considering exposing APIs to anonymous data or such like?
Like you say, anonymizing data is nigh impossible, so I'd rather just avoid it entirely. Maybe local processing?
We are thinking a user driven OAuth style service would be valuable.
Makes sense.