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posted by martyb on Tuesday November 12 2019, @07:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the all-the-better-to-sell-ads-to-you-with dept.

Google has access to detailed health records on tens of millions of Americans

Google quietly partnered last year with Ascension—the country's second-largest health system—and has since gained access to detailed medical records on tens of millions of Americans, according to a November 11 report by The Wall Street Journal.

The endeavor, code-named "Project Nightingale," has enabled at least 150 Google employees to see patient health information, which includes diagnoses, laboratory test results, hospitalization records, and other data, according to internal documents and the newspaper's sources. In all, the data amounts to complete medical records, WSJ notes, and contains patient names and birth dates.

The move is the latest by Google to get a grip on the sprawling health industry. At the start of the month, Google announced a deal to buy Fitbit, prompting concerns over what it will do with all the sensitive health data amassed from the popular wearables. Today's news will likely spur more concern over health privacy issues.

Neither Google nor Ascension has notified patients or doctors about the data sharing. Ascension—a Catholic, non-profit health system—includes 34,000 providers who see patients at more than 2,600 hospitals, doctor offices, and other facilities across 21 states and the District of Columbia.

[...] Both Google and Ascension said that the project is compliant with federal health information privacy protections and is "underpinned by a robust data security and protection effort."

Health privacy experts told WSJ that the project appears to be legal under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). As the newspaper notes, the law "generally allows hospitals to share data with business partners without telling patients, as long as the information is used 'only to help the covered entity carry out its health care functions.'"


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @03:39PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @03:39PM (#919865)

    I don't want a reward, compensation, and don't want to profit from a lawsuit.

    I just want the CEO and other executives punished for violating the trust model we are required to have for the doctor/patient/health care model to work. I want them punished. Punished so badly that non-profits and shareholder value alike have reason to choose patient and user privacy over whatever value they derived from selling out the individual and calling it good.

    If I can't opt-out, then by god I want to make sure they can't get out of jail free, either. Oh wait, it was a religious medical institution that sold out the flock--for free. I guess god is on their side.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @09:03PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @09:03PM (#920006)

    So what you're saying is that you don't want to see health care move forward by trying to coordinate data. I see.

    Arrangements like these rarely have jack shit to do anything with individuals. They really don't care that little Bobby has pee pee cancer or that you have hemorrhoids. They DO care about finding connections like when X percent of people with hemorrhoids and had Virus X end up developing colon cancer. They do care about when 75% of people on drug X live 5 years longer and 95% on drug Y lived 5 years longer that they can recommend people use drug Y - although that comparison is available easily with data today and doesn't require big data.

    Now, it is possible that this arrangement actually used people's names. That's not illegal. Although it would be unusual for an instance like this when they don't need to know who you are, only that they know that the same individual's results go through the system. In other words, it is equally unlikely (unless I read something in TFA) that they know who you are.

    All of this is a long-winded way of saying that the story hasn't given nearly enough information to know if you should be concerned or if you should lighten up.