Posted on 11/11/2019 1:01:01 PM PST by ransomnote
Google is engaged with one of the country’s largest health-care systems to collect and crunch the detailed personal health information of millions of Americans across 21 states.
The initiative, code-named “Project Nightingale,” appears to be the largest in a series of efforts by Silicon Valley giants to gain access to personal health data and establish a toehold in the massive health-care industry. Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are also aggressively pushing into health care, though they haven’t yet struck deals of this scope.
Google began the effort in secret last year with St. Louis-based Ascension, the second-largest health system in the U.S., with the data sharing accelerating since summer, the documents show.
The data involved in Project Nightingale encompasses lab results, doctor diagnoses and hospitalization records, among other categories, and amounts to a complete health history, including patient names and dates of birth.
Neither patients nor doctors have been notified. At least 150 Google employees already have access to much of the data on tens of millions of patients, according to a person familiar with the matter and documents.
MORE AT LINK
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
If you search “big toe hurts”, Big Google Brother adds it to your database in their records.
Health care systems have health care records?
It’s Armageddon, I tells ya.
Which is why you should always add “Asking for a friend” to your searches.
Giant HIPAA violation.
Health care systems have health care records?
It’s Armageddon, I tells ya.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It’s Google that has access to health care records. Yeah it’s not quite Armageddon - more of the planning stage.
If this data has not been de-identified, Ascension has violated federal law by giving it to Google.
My bet is that is has been de-identified... and this article is a bit of fear mongering...
“Giant HIPAA violation.”
Pay off the right people and there are no violations.
If they are adding any personal identifiers that allow someone to identify a specific individual then it is a HIPAA violation unless they have an expressly signed waiver.
Kiss all privacy goodbye thanks to electronic medical records.
"The data involved in Project Nightingale encompasses lab results, doctor diagnoses and hospitalization records, among other categories, and amounts to a complete health history, including patient names and dates of birth."
My first thought as well.
Again, I highly doubt the authenticity of that... because if they did, just for the sake of giving it to them... they would be in violation of federal law.
If however, they did something like, Hey we are going to host our data on Google Cloud, and pushed it up to their machines there, that’s not “giving the data to google”...
My bet there is a LOT more to this, that is being reported, because the fines that that would be faced here, would put them out of business if they just handed over data arbitrarily.
Sure there is a LOT more to this than is being reported.
Also from the article:
“But privacy experts said it appeared to be permissible under federal law. That law, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, 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.’”
That’s the huge loophole in HIPAA and pretty much makes anything permissible as long as those functions can be demonstrated.
In general true, but HIPAA laws are taken quite seriously, and this certainly seems to be a violation.
So much for the “HIPPA Laws’.
they would be in violation of federal law......It appears EVERYONE is in violation of federal law except, We the people. The system of law has been broken since Obama got in. Wake up.
They are not, its clear from the article what is going on:
“Google in this case is using the data, in part, to design new software, underpinned by advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning, that zeroes in on individual patients to suggest changes to their care. Staffers across Alphabet Inc., GOOG -0.93% Google’s parent, have access to the patient information, documents show, including some employees of Google Brain, a research science division credited with some of the company’s biggest breakthroughs.”
Your data can be shared with others as part of them doing their business... looks like this company has reached agreement with Google to analyze their data to help develop better treatment options etc...
Of course, its highly unlikely that is ALL that Google is doing with that data.
All the big tech companies probably need to be destroyed and lots of their ‘just doing my job’ people terminated permanently, Their moral systems are totally shot and can never be trusted again.
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