For those of you who still have any question about who owns the data in our EMR, please think for a moment about the following analogy. Microsoft Office sits on your computer and it "phones home" regularly to check for updates, security issues, etc. just like Amazing Charts does. Imagine the response if Microsoft announced that some time ago they inserted into their user agreement a clause stating that all documents entered into Microsoft Word and all spreadsheets entered into Excel were being extracted from your computer and de-identified, and could then be used for whatever purpose Microsoft saw fit.
What would be the reaction? Would lawyers say that the contracts, letters, and other documents they created belonged to Microsoft? Would accountants and financial analysts say that all the material in the Excel spreadsheets belongs to Microsoft?
How about if Quicken took this approach, and said that all of your financial data belonged to you, but they could take it and sell it for marketing purposes to whomever they chose?
Would it make any difference when they told you the information was de-identified?
Why should that intellectual property be any different than the information we put into amazing charts?
