speaking about when, in September 2010, he wrote about the great divide caused by Open Health  
Data: 
[in the USA] "statistically speaking, chronic disease is associated with being 
older, African American, less educated, and living in a lower-income household. By 
contrast, Internet use is statistically associated with being younger, white, college-
educated, and living in a higher-income household. Thus, it is not surprising that the 
chronically ill report lower rates of Internet access. 
Starting from this, and commenting a study of the performances, with respect to coronary artery  
bypass grafting, of several medical centers, Frydman expressed his concern that: 
the empowered will have access to [this data] and will act upon it, 
while many of the people suffering from chronic diseases (the same 
population that would benefit most from access to this information) won't. 
Over time it is therefore probable that the current centers of excellence will 
treat an ever growing number of empowered while the centers that 
currently experience high mortality rates will get worse and worse result, 
simply because they will treat an ever growing number of digital outliers 
who haven't the possibility to obtain health data and apply filters. 
Since one of the topics of this project is the economic value of Open Data, it is necessary to add a  
somewhat obvious observation to Frydman's concerns (regardless of their probability). Even if it is  
difficult now to make accurate estimates, such negative developments would surely impact also the  
costs  of  health  services  and  insurances,  not  to  mention  healthcare-related  jobs,  both  in  the 
communities hosting centers of excellence and in those with the worst ones. 
3.6.4. Lack of education to data
Boris Müller, professor for interface and interaction design at the University of Applied Sciences in  
Potsda,  said  in  an  April  2011  interview:  "I  think  that  really  a  citizen  needs  to  know  how 
visualizations work  in order to really  evaluate  the  quality of the data and the  quality  of the  
evaluation." As data visualization and analysis becomes more popular easier to use (even as a tool  
for manipulating the public opinion), it's important for the public to: 
• understand that, before becoming digital, information was coded, stored and used in many  
ways, through social norms and human interactions more complex than computer ones (cfr  
the  digitization  of  India  land  ownership  records),  therefore  making  exact,  one-to-one 
equivalence between analog and digital procedures hard or impossible in many cases 
• think critically about where data comes from 
• remember to always follow the development of data-based stories, or accusation. 
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Copyright  2011 LEM, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna. This work is released under a Creative Commons attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)