Medical data, if kept mostly anonymous, should be openly shared and available to the public. The issue with our medical system now, is the only time sharing takes place, is with the express consent of doctor and patient, so often times patterns in diseases, and warning signs are obfuscated behind lazy doctors, and misinformed and paranoid patients.

This data can exist without connection to a persons name and address. I only see age, and region as the only identifiable markers that would be of great importance in such studies.

I think I would be far more comfortable with my personal medical data in the hands (so to speak) of an Expert System that is purpose built for this task, rather than hoping that some random bunch of characters off the internet can figure it out.

However, I do think it's an intriguing idea. Perhaps feed the best-case-scenarios into the expert system as well? No need for the correct diagnosis to be lost- collect that data to make the expert systems all that much smarter.

It's unfortunate that there's no real data or analysis in this article. Crowdsourcing can be unreasonably effective in many situations (my experiences with Alternate Reality Games has left me no doubt on that), but it's not at all clear to me whether this is a good usecase for it. Anyone know of any better information available about this?