Free Republic

Hospitals across the United States are said to have granted Microsoft, Amazon and IBM access to sensitive identifiable medical records. The tech giants are each working with medical centers in Washington, Massachusetts and Minnesota. Google will now have access to patients' test results, diagnoses and hospitalizations to give them a full digital health history. Neither doctors nor the patients in the 21 states where it will be used had been told about it. About 150 Google employees and 100 Ascension staff collaborated on Project Nightingale, transferring the personal data of more than 50 million Americans to Google.

Search giant is amassing health records from Ascension facilities in 21 states; patients not yet informed 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...