“The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Google has been working since 2018 on a ‘secret’ project involving patient data with Ascension, the St. Louis-based nationwide health system.”
WHY IT MATTERS
“The initiative, which WSJ said had drawn some questions, both ‘technological and ethical,’ from some Ascension employees about how the information was being analyzed and shared, had reportedly been code-named Project Nightingale.”
“Google is apparently using the data to help inform its design of new artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning software for Ascension. WSJ reports that employees at different Alphabet divisions, including Google Brain, have access to the patient information.”
“Until recently, neither patients nor physicians knew that ‘at least 150 Google employees already have access to much of the data on tens of millions of patients’ across 21 states, according to the article’s author Rob Copeland, including ‘lab results, doctor diagnoses and hospitalization records, among other categories … including patient names and dates of birth.’”
“But within hours of the WSJ report, Ascension put out a press release explaining its work with Google – and promising that the work is ‘HIPAA compliant and underpinned by a robust data security and protection effort and adherence to Ascension’s strict requirements for data handling…’” Read the full article here.
Source: Ascension, Google working on ‘secret’ patient data project, says WSJ – By Mike Miliard, November 11, 2019. Healthcare IT News.
