10-01-2025, 06:55 PM
Written and posted October 1, 2025:
I was unaware of the existence of health data warehouses and the development of big data sources supporting healthcare and health policy designs when I started my Population Health course at CSU Global in the M.S. in Information Technology Project Management degree in August of 2025. I was aware of the emerging deployment of artificial intelligence components and platforms through coursework I did at American Public University in my last term there during the first half of 2024 (B.S. in Health Sciences), and have since been working with various LLM based chat services for research and educating myself through various online means regarding the history of AI and the current implementations of it in ordinary business operations, IT security, and forensics generally. The application of AI to big data sources is a new development in healthcare and elsewhere, although Palantir’s projects privatizing the Federal Government’s “total situational awareness” initiative in response to the 9/11 attack has been in development for two decades now. Being a national security initiative, publication concerning it has been severely limited, making it difficult for researchers and the public to scrutinize its capabilities or the uses to which it is put. The potential of such a diverse and integrated warehouse of information on individuals and groups, including health relevant data, combined with the potential of AI to analyze behavior patterns, creates potential for social good in health policy design on the order of a “God’s eye view.” So far, I have not seen any productive application of Palantir’s capabilities to this problem, although there are state level initiatives which integrate health data into warehouses for study and policy design which are somewhat effective.
This is a serious under utilization of the potential of AI applied to health data warehouses, implying reluctance on the part of those in possession and control of them to apply their capabilities to producing analyses which are outside of current norms or organizational structure justifications. Given the political grid lock the U.S. has been experiencing for the past couple of decades, it is likely more productive to look to developments in other countries for examples of productive and ideologically unhindered implementations. If Congress passed a law requiring that only the most reliable and powerful information technology reasonably available be used for policy related analysis, expressing standards for use in its acquisition, deployment, and field evaluation, then progress would be mandated. To my knowledge, no such requirement has been proposed, leaving the necessary competence of private industry in the thought leadership role. Other than through the usual and somewhat structured market forces, this category of authority remains unaccountable except as expressly regulated by law. The result is under utilization of powerful new technology by organizations which can be held to the ethical standards necessary for healthcare and health promotion in populations.
This is one problem that this organization attempts to solve through express adoption of IEEE’s Code of Software Ethics for Software Engineers, published at https://www.computer.org/education/code-of-ethics. With strict adherence to these ethical standards, we can bring the power of the health data warehouse to the customer to support them in their health journey.
I was unaware of the existence of health data warehouses and the development of big data sources supporting healthcare and health policy designs when I started my Population Health course at CSU Global in the M.S. in Information Technology Project Management degree in August of 2025. I was aware of the emerging deployment of artificial intelligence components and platforms through coursework I did at American Public University in my last term there during the first half of 2024 (B.S. in Health Sciences), and have since been working with various LLM based chat services for research and educating myself through various online means regarding the history of AI and the current implementations of it in ordinary business operations, IT security, and forensics generally. The application of AI to big data sources is a new development in healthcare and elsewhere, although Palantir’s projects privatizing the Federal Government’s “total situational awareness” initiative in response to the 9/11 attack has been in development for two decades now. Being a national security initiative, publication concerning it has been severely limited, making it difficult for researchers and the public to scrutinize its capabilities or the uses to which it is put. The potential of such a diverse and integrated warehouse of information on individuals and groups, including health relevant data, combined with the potential of AI to analyze behavior patterns, creates potential for social good in health policy design on the order of a “God’s eye view.” So far, I have not seen any productive application of Palantir’s capabilities to this problem, although there are state level initiatives which integrate health data into warehouses for study and policy design which are somewhat effective.
This is a serious under utilization of the potential of AI applied to health data warehouses, implying reluctance on the part of those in possession and control of them to apply their capabilities to producing analyses which are outside of current norms or organizational structure justifications. Given the political grid lock the U.S. has been experiencing for the past couple of decades, it is likely more productive to look to developments in other countries for examples of productive and ideologically unhindered implementations. If Congress passed a law requiring that only the most reliable and powerful information technology reasonably available be used for policy related analysis, expressing standards for use in its acquisition, deployment, and field evaluation, then progress would be mandated. To my knowledge, no such requirement has been proposed, leaving the necessary competence of private industry in the thought leadership role. Other than through the usual and somewhat structured market forces, this category of authority remains unaccountable except as expressly regulated by law. The result is under utilization of powerful new technology by organizations which can be held to the ethical standards necessary for healthcare and health promotion in populations.
This is one problem that this organization attempts to solve through express adoption of IEEE’s Code of Software Ethics for Software Engineers, published at https://www.computer.org/education/code-of-ethics. With strict adherence to these ethical standards, we can bring the power of the health data warehouse to the customer to support them in their health journey.