IN BRIEF

Senate panel votes to ban data-mining

A key state Senate panel voted Monday for a bill that would make Nevada the second state in the country to prohibit data-mining companies from buying doctors’ prescribing information.

The Senate Commerce and Labor Committee voted 4-1 for Senate Bill 231.

Sen. Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas, cast the opposing vote, saying the bill would expand patient privacy rights to doctors and “I’m not ready to go there yet.”

A handful of data-mining companies had been purchasing information about what doctors prescribe which medications for over a decade, selling the information to pharmaceutical companies.

Connecticut-based IMS Health, considered the industry leader, reported $444 million in profits during 2006. According to the company’s SEC filings, almost half its revenue comes from helping drug companies optimize their sales force.

IMS Health and competitor Wolters Kluwer Health argued that current law was meant to protect the privacy of patients, not doctors. They argued that doctor-identified data has beneficial uses, allowing for research and doctor education.

But the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Joseph Heck, R-Henderson, said the bill makes allowances for such noncommercial uses of the data.

CARSON CITY

Assembly committee OKs new judgeships

The Assembly Judiciary Committee voted Monday for a bill that would add 12 new judgeships in the Las Vegas and Reno areas, but some panel members expressed concern about the measure’s local government price tag of at least $32 million.

Assembly Bill 246 now moves to the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

The Legislature must consider the price to the state for paying judge’s salaries, about $4 million a year. But those costs are much less than what the counties would shoulder for building and staffing new court facilities.

The Judiciary Committee also passed a bill that would prohibit police from requiring a victim of sexual crime to take a polygraph test.