The clues are a bit earlier in the article and the full name of HIPAA
> The financial trajectory of MarketScan was perhaps unimaginable in 1981, when a former insurance executive named Ernie Ludy founded the company. His idea was to simply collect patients’ data and parcel it out to big companies that were seeking to control costs by getting a more granular view of their employees’ health care use.
> The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996