“Project Nightingale” gives Google access to millions of US citizens’ patient data!

Google gained access to patient data: To develop healthcare services and optimize medical care, Google is now working with the second largest hospital system (Ascension) in the USA. Ascension is one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the United States, operating more than 2,600 nursing facilities, including 150 hospitals and more than 50 retirement homes, in 20 states and the District of Columbia.

Nightingale, I hear you tramping!

As a result of a joint deal, Ascension would have uploaded patient data to Google's cloud servers as part of the "Nighingale" project, thereby giving Google access to millions of patient data. According to Google, this is a common practice and no consent is required. Neither doctors nor patients were informed about this.

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There have already been reports on Google's “Project Nightingale” from the Wall Street Journal . It was explained here that around 150 employees had access to the relevant data. The New York Times , in turn, spoke of access by dozens of people who may also have downloaded data. Google itself told The Verge that there is a standard contract that allows exactly this approach. It would only be about further development in the health sector and not, as feared, about collecting data, in this case highly sensitive data such as laboratory results, diagnoses, hospital stays and entire health histories. This is also linked to patient data such as name and date of birth.

“As the healthcare environment continues to rapidly evolve, we must transform to better meet the needs and expectations of our customers and our own caregivers and healthcare providers. This requires the programmatic integration of new models of care delivered through the digital platforms, applications and services that are part of our customers' everyday experience,” said Eduardo Conrado, Executive Vice President, Strategy and Innovations, Ascension.

No information how much data was uploaded!

However, Ascension does not provide any information about how much patient data has already been uploaded to the Google Cloud. Google and Ascension are already testing software that can search electronic health records by specific categories and create charts and information. The aim here is to use artificial intelligence to read electronic health records and use them to predict or identify medical conditions more quickly.

The aim is to give medical professionals better access to patient data in order to improve patient care and facilitate treatments. In fact, it is legal for health systems to share patient medical information with business partners, including electronic medical records companies. However, Google, which has been fined several times for violating data protection laws, is not trusted by many patients with their personal medical information.

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Digital reform of the healthcare system is currently being discussed in Germany.

Critics see a frontal attack on fundamental rights. There are fears that improving research will come at the expense of patient data protection. Google knows consumers very well through its advertising business. Knows what people are interested in, where they are, what they search on Google or watch on YouTube. When Google announced plans to acquire Fitbit, a maker of activity tracking devices, Google said it would not use health data in connection with its advertising business.

Many companies see healthcare as a great opportunity.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has emphasized several times that further development in the healthcare sector is particularly important to him. Apple has already turned to medical research with the iPhone and Apple Watch. Microsoft introduced cloud-based applications for healthcare systems to share medical data. Amazon is also pursuing high goals to save lives by analyzing unstructured patient data with the cloud service “Amazon Comprehend Medical”. In any case, the extensive access to patient data is likely to be a real coup for Google. It remains to be seen whether the focus here is actually on improving people or whether an increase in sales represents the commitment in this direction.

Note: The final word has not yet been spoken as this matter is being examined more closely by a federal investigation, CNN reports!

Article image: Shutterstock / By Linda Parton


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