Google has tap a partnership with a prominent health care inspection and repair company to advance its healthcare software package services offerings . But a new report say the data being used for the project comes from the health records of tens of millions of people who have no idea their data point is being used by Google for this aim .
TheWall Street Journalreported Monday that the technical school giant partnered with Ascension , a non - profit and Catholic wellness systems company , on the broadcast code - named “ Project Nightingale . ” agree to the Journal , Google began its first step with Ascension last year , and it involve everything from diagnoses , lab outcome , birth date , patient names , and other personal health information — all of it reportedly reach over to Google without first notifying patients or doctors . The Journal say this number to information on millions of Americans cross 21 state .
“ By working in partnership with chair health care systems like Ascension , we hope to transmute the delivery of healthcare through the power of the cloud , information analytics , car erudition , and mod productivity creature — at long last improving outcomes , reducing costs , and save lives , ” Tariq Shaukat , chairperson of Google Cloud , say in a statement .
Photo: Leon Neal (Getty)
Beyond the alarming reality that a tech society cancollect information about citizenry without their knowledgefor its own uses , the Journal mention it ’s legal under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act ( HIPAA ) . When reached for gossip , representatives for both company bespeak Gizmodo to apress releaseabout the family relationship — which the Journal put forward was bring out after its report card — that states : “ All workplace related to Ascension ’s conflict with Google is HIPAA compliant and underpinned by a racy data point security and trade protection attempt and adherence to Ascension ’s strict requisite for data manipulation . ”
Still , the Journal report raises concerns about whether the data handling is indeed as secure as both company appear to think it is . bring up a source familiar with the subject as well as colligate documents , the newspaper said at least 150 employees at Google have access to a significant portion of the health information Ascension handed over on millions of people .
Google has n’t precisely proven itself to be infallible when it comes to protect user data . Remember when Google+ exploiter had their data exposed and Google did nothing to alarm in social club toshield its own ass ? Or when a Google contractile organ leak out more than a thousand Assistant recordings , and the companydefended itselfby claiming that most of its audio snippets are n’t reviewed by humans ? Not exactly the kind of stuff you want to read about a company that may have your aesculapian history on hired man .
At the very least this seems anothermassive ethical oversighton the part of Google and Ascension , considering most people who visit the physician expect what happens there to remain between them and their practice physician . At worst , it has the potential to be a massive privateness risk for any number of individuals whose datum is accessible to dozens of employees at the company . Let ’s hope it ’s not the latter .
Datadata privacyGoogleHealthPrivacy
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