Google’s health-care project with NIH was scuttled over data privacy concerns

It is a perfect storm in a tea-cup.

Google understands and realises this and calculates it as the “cost of doing business”. I am surprised that everyone is surprised about this!

Over the course of planning the X-ray project, Google’s researchers didn’t obtain any legal agreements covering the privacy of patient information, the person said, adding that the company rushed toward publicly announcing the project without properly vetting the data for privacy concerns. The emails about Google’s NIH project were part of records obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request.

Google’s ability to uphold data privacy is under scrutiny as it increasingly inserts itself into people’s medical lives. The Internet giant this week said it has partnered with health-care provider Ascension to collect and store personal data for millions of patients, including full names, dates of birth and clinical histories, in order to make smarter recommendations to physicians. But the project raised privacy concerns in part because it wasn’t immediately clear whether patients had consented to have their files transferred from Ascension servers or what Google’s intentions were.

via Google’s health-care project with NIH was scuttled over data privacy concerns – The Washington Post