“Technically, we have never been able to figure out how to do that,” Glaser says, or at least how to do it in a way that would not hamper providing the proper health care for patients. Glaser says when a patient comes in to the ER because he suffers from, say, a cardiac arrest, and other complications are found, such as a malignant tumor, specialists have to be consulted immediately. “You are smothered with people, and you’d better be smothered with people,” Glaser says. “We have no idea who has been called in to consult on a patient. We have to protect privacy on the one hand, but we don’t want to unintentionally shut out a provider that can give the proper care now.”

When immediate access isn’t such a high priority, and personal information is handled by a wider set of people, a more strict value set should be applied. At health researcher I2B2—which stands for Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside, a federally funded research program at Partners HealthCare System—doctors are developing a protocol that requires asking the permission of people before collecting their DNA. In addition, researchers must follow a defined process for accessing patients’ health records and then comparing their DNA to the medical histories to find links and causes for genetic diseases, along with possible treatments.

Because such information could be so readily abused (employers could conceivably refuse employment to people with a certain genetic makeup, for instance) the value bar researchers must clear to access such information has to be higher. “The investigators allowed to see this genetic data are also required to sign contracts saying they will not share the data with anyone,” says Dr. Shawn Murphy, principal investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital and a founder of I2B2.

Find Out What Your Customers Want

One of the best ways to place a value on personal information is to let the customer decide the value of it. That might seem counterintuitive, but it works for E-loan, an online provider of mortgages and car and personal loans. E-loan has built its reputation on providing strict privacy policies. On its website, E-loan states it has “Lending’s strictest privacy policy.”

In its online home equity and car loan application forms, E-loan asks customers if they want to opt out of sending their application to an overseas third-party processor. If they opt out, E-loan sends the application to a domestic processor. Unlike many other loan companies, E-loan asks customers for permission before it shares personal information with other lenders—an opt-in policy. E-loan also allows customers access to their personal data to correct errors.