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AI Google Privacy

Google AI Has Access To 1.6M People's NHS Records (newscientist.com) 49

Posted by msmash from the google-knows-your-ills dept.
Hal Hodson, reporting for New Scientist:It's no secret that Google has broad ambitions in healthcare. But a document obtained by New Scientist reveals that the tech giant's collaboration with the UK's National Health Service goes far beyond what has been publicly announced. The document -- a data-sharing agreement between Google-owned artificial intelligence company DeepMind and the Royal Free NHS Trust -- gives the clearest picture yet of what the company is doing and what sensitive data it now has access to. The agreement gives DeepMind access to a wide range of healthcare data on the 1.6 million patients who pass through three London hospitals run by the Royal Free NHS Trust -- Barnet, Chase Farm and the Royal Free -- each year. This will include information about people who are HIV-positive, for instance, as well as details of drug overdoses and abortions. The agreement also includes access to patient data from the last five years. According to their original agreement, Google cannot use the data in any other part of its business.
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Google AI Has Access To 1.6M People's NHS Records More

Google AI Has Access To 1.6M People's NHS Records

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  • Anonymized hospital and health care data are widely available to researchers inside the U.S. as well, and have been for a long time.

    This is a non-story about longstanding practice.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This is a non-story about longstanding practice.

      ..OR IS IT?

      Maybe it's more about the overreaching of Google in it's ambitions to spy on people more and more so they have more data to sell to their 'partners' so they can make more and more money. You'd think they're Microsoft or something, with the all the ways they're forcing spyware on everyone. Then with their fucking 'self driving cars' they'll be able to control where and when people travel and track their every movement. Fuck Google, fuck Microsoft, and fuck YOU for being a paid troll for all the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

        Fuck Google, fuck Microsoft, and fuck YOU for being a paid troll for all the above.

        He's not the paid troll for all the above. I'm the paid troll for all of the above. And I'm also watching your every move through my binoculars.

    • For example, SPARCS [ny.gov] in New York.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Nothing anonymous stays anonymous anymore.

      Not even AC's like me. Anyone with motive and a little time could identify me and stop by the house for coffee in no time.

      What is being done with data about human beings is the second biggest story of our time, after climate change.

      • I don't like coffee. Do you have any tea?

      • I would argue billions of people in ever more-open markets living higher quality lives is a far bigger story than any of that.

        Advancing medical tech (which Google is pursuing in this story) is far larger, too.

        But lives not lost in a gutter starving, or due to conquered disease, don't do so well in front of the camera.

      • Re:Yawn (Score:4, Funny)

        by orgelspieler ( 865795 ) <w0lfieNO@SPAMmac.com> on Friday April 29, 2016 @11:45AM (#52013819) Journal
        I'll stop by tomorrow morning, Frank. But you know you shouldn't be drinking coffee with your high blood pressure.

    • Anonymized hospital and health care data are widely available to researchers inside the U.S. as well

      Neither the writeup nor TFA mention "anonymized". Could you explain, where you got the information from?

      • Anonymized hospital and health care data are widely available to researchers inside the U.S. as well

        Neither the writeup nor TFA mention "anonymized". Could you explain, where you got the information from?

        Um, you know, by doing research. By reading other things. By using teh interwebs.

        https://theconversation.com/your-nhs-data-is-completely-anonymous-until-it-isnt-22924 [theconversation.com]

        The data are scrubbed of direct personal identifiers, which are replaced by an ID code. The database does include things times, diagnoses, and prescriptions, which could be used to de-anonymize the data with enough ancillary information, but without which the data would be mostly useless for any kind of analysis. My point is that there are alre

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by NotAPK ( 4529127 )

          Apologies for the terrible citation, but anonymised health records can be de-anonymised relatively easily [bloomberg.com].

        • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

          by mi ( 197448 )

          See? All you had to do was to cite your reference with the original claim...

          Oh, wait, the very title of your link says: "your-nhs-data-is-completely-anonymous-until-it-isnt"...

          My point is that there are already publicly available databases in the U.S

          And yet, the NHS data covers the entire nation, whereas the US databases (if they are, in fact, as detailed and dangerous to privacy as the NHS) cover only some of the patients.

          Just another reason why "single payer" is such a wet dream of Statists...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by castus ( 4552487 )
      By "available to researchers", do you mean that it's available to people in universities studying health or that it's being sold to companies willing to pay for it?

    • Re:Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)

      by countach44 ( 790998 ) on Friday April 29, 2016 @11:31AM (#52013715)
      As a service provider, Google is not equivalent to those other researchers.

      The article didn't say, but it would be interesting to know if dates/times were anonymized out (they aren't in the datasets I've seen). With Google calendar and gmail, it's pretty straightforward to deanonymize a rather large set of those patients.

      EMRs are becoming more prevalent and some patients start using email for communication (not always that best, but you know it happens). It sure seems like that whole "let's offer an email service" can be quite the treasure trove for this and other kinds of information.

    • Yeah well, it might be a long-standing practice in the US of A, where people have almost no privacy rights but here in the UK, we* actually respect people's right not to be watched, interfered with, data-mined, manipulated, pimped out and monetised.

      This is a really fucking big deal - we only have Google's word that they won't use the data elswhere in their business and they are not a charity so we can't expect them *not* to monetise the insights that are derived from highly confidential data that was disclo

  • Google is building an automatic diagnostician. How interesting...
    I see lots of unemployed GP doctors on the horizon...
    ... replaced by nurses with iPads.

  • Greetz from Yankeeland !! Hows that digital colonoscopy workin out for ya?

  • throw it a bone (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Friday April 29, 2016 @11:48AM (#52013841)

    If you want results out of it it seems reasonable to put data in for analysis.

    Also, I can imagine Deepmind taking better care of the data than the UK government does. I think the government has had a string of data breaches in the past.

    Finally, presumably the company has deep pockets as well as a deep mind and can therefore be sued if they are negligent.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      Finally, presumably the company has deep pockets as well as a deep mind and can therefore be sued if they are negligent.

      That means they also have equally deep pockets to defend themselves in court, or buy politicians to pass legislation so you can't sue them from some technicality.

  • Clinical research problematic (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    HIPPA makes the distinction between data used for "healthcare operations" (improving care for the provider using the data) and "publishable research". The former can use identified data as needed. Research for publication requires oversight by institutional review boards and privacy officers, and, except in low risk situations, requires patient consent for use of identified data. I read the data sharing agreement for this study as Google doing the work for direct patient care "as a service for NHS Hospit

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