Google: Collects medical data of millions of patients without permission, for their "good"

The company works with one of the largest US health systems. The purpose is to develop a software that will suggest to the patient changes to improve his health.

Tthe motto of the time is “Data is gold", Especially when this data concerns medical data for users. It is no coincidence that all the big technology companies have made a turn in the field of Health, whether we are talking about services or gadgets for monitoring physical activity.

In the case of Google, however, the situation goes much further, as according to the Wall Street Journal, the company works with one of the largest US health systems to collect and analyze the personal medical data of American citizens from 21 states.

Project Nightingale has been running in collaboration with Ascension since 2018 and has accelerated dramatically since last summer. It involves the collection of information from laboratory tests, doctors' diagnoses and medical history in clinics and hospitals, in order to create a complete medical profile of the patient that includes the name and date of birth. All this without the consent of patients or doctors!

So far, the data of tens of millions of patients have been collected and accessed by at least 150 Google employees. It is worth noting that some Ascension employees have objected to this practice of Google, however, privacy experts say that the collection of this data is legal thanks to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, which allows the sharing of this data by hospitals to their corporate partners without the consent of patients.

Legislation also allows this data to be exploited by companies wishing to improve healthcare operations. In the case of Google, it is reported that it uses the data to develop new software that with the help of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning can suggest changes to the patient to improve his health.

Opinions differ on how to exploit this sensitive information. On the one hand you can say that they do not even ask for the patient's permission to 'access' his medical data, on the other hand, if this practice really leads to the development of technology that will improve care and consequently health of the patient, who will say no?

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