Privacy: Google has sucked health data from millions of patients in the United States

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A survey of Wall Street Journal reveals that Google was collecting clinical data from millions of patients through an agreement with a huge North American health organization. A legal practice, but morality more than doubtful.

We knew Google was very active in the field of health thanks to its Calico branch which gave itself for humble mission to "Solve the death"but the search giant is even more invested than we thought. Indeed, a recent survey of Wall Street Journal just revealed that the company had sucked clinical data from millions of patients in the United States without their consent.

As detailed in the English-language newspaper, the Nightingale Project aimed to gather data from more than 2,600 medical organizations across the United States to try to create an ersatz search engine that can help doctors and patients to better identify potential diseases and propose more appropriate treatments. Little problem, the contract between Alphabet (parent company of Google) and Ascension (the second largest health care organization in the United States) did not require the prior information of doctors or patients.

A perfectly legal practice

In short, almost no one in the care chain was aware of this large-scale collection. And yet, the amount of data collected is quite large. Basic information such as name, date of birth and address was provided, as well as more advanced data such as health history, Review results and patient status. According to Wall Street Journalat least 150 people at Google had access to this information.

The web giant should not be worried since this practice, as morally debatable as it is, is perfectly legal according to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, a law that intends to facilitate and regulate "Data exchange between health actors". In a blog post, the Mountain View company prides itself on complying with all the laws in force concerning the securing of data. Moreover, no data will be merged with those collected through Google's more "traditional" activities. Ite, missa is.

And in France ?

We remember that Google has got its hands on Fitbit there is little. The sports wristband manufacturer will enable Google to collect health data from more than 100 million devices. But here too, the company ensures that this information "Will not be used for Google ads" and that it will be possible to delete them. Google knows that it works on eggs on this theme.

In France, the subject of the collection of health data came back on the scene during a law promulgated in July 2019 which provides for the automatic opening of shared medical records for people born after June 2021. The shared medical record (or DMP) is a "digital health record" that centralizes a large package of information such as treatments, exam results, allergies, etc. Optional, this tool is already talking about him because of its enormous cost (more than 500 million euros since 2004) and the potential risk of widespread registration that it presents.

Source: Wall Street Journal

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