Google partnered with Ascension, the 2nd-largest US health-care system, to analyze personal health info of millions, sources say as part of Project Nightingale
The Ascension deal lands five months after a [[a:943191|lawsuit accused the University of Chicago's medical center of sharing hundreds of thousands of identifiable patient records with Google]] — so this is the second time in 2019 that Google's appetite for hospital data has surfaced through a health system partner rather than any public announcement. The Wall Street Journal report says the arrangement covers personal health information of millions at the second-largest US health-care system, under the internal name Project Nightingale.
What makes the story more than a one-off leak is where it sits in Google's arc: within three months the company had [[a:950557|unified its scattered health projects under Google Health, a 500-plus-person unit led by former Geisinger CEO David Feinberg]], and by mid-2021 it signed a similar algorithm-development deal with HCA Healthcare. Nightingale is the template those later moves follow.
First-order effects
Ascension hands Google access to patient records from millions of people for analytics, while patients and clinicians at the second-largest US health system learn about the scale of the data sharing from press reports rather than from Ascension itself.
Second-order effects
Every other large hospital chain weighing a Google data partnership now faces the scrutiny question first — the UChicago lawsuit and the Nightingale reporting make 'share records with Google' a legal and reputational decision, not just an IT one.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds — Nightingale, then the Google Health consolidation, then the HCA algorithms deal — US hospital data becomes the training substrate for Google's clinical tools, with health systems competing to be platform partners rather than data owners.
The trend: Google is assembling a national-scale clinical-data position by signing hospital systems one at a time, converting health records into the raw material for its healthcare algorithms.
Google just updated its blog with an FAQ. Explains they did sign a BAA. Says a few employees in controlled conditions had access to PHI. Not clear if patient consent would have been a requirement, but still, they could have made that step regardless... https://cloud.google.com/..…
I dunno which comms genius decided to push the line that the Google/Ascension deal isn't a secret cos it was mentioned on the Q2 earnings call. the point is that patients weren't informed, not Google's investors!
You see Mr. Bond, with these records I'll be able to trace my “new plague” and only my shell-corporation can provide the cure! *reveals elaborate map of the world, lights blink red* I give you... Project Nightingale! https://twitter.com/...
Google's effort to store millions of patients' health records includes an interface much like its flagship search engine. A name search could reveal everything from patients' medications to their body temperatures. https://www.wsj.com/...
As I said from a stage earlier today, Facebook has been in a “feeding frenzy” for the past eighteen months. And the last six months we've started to see similar signals about Google that we saw with Facebook in 2016/2017 ... before all hell broke loose in 2018. https://twitter.co…
Whoa. Google whistleblower made a video of a doc dump ... (and no, it's not on YouTube lol) If the company violated HIPAA, it'll be a legal bloodbath. https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
My guess on each cloud's practical attitude towards my data: Microsoft: Risk averse. Play the long game. Amazon: You clicked on the EULA. Read the fine print. Google: These laws are dumb! Disrupt for the greater good! Ask forgiveness not permission! https://cloud.google.com/...
If a Doctor leaves an EHR screen on in the hallway he or she is fined a million $bucks. If Google buys the patient Médical records from a large hospital Inc they ring the bell on Wall St. https://www-theverge-com.cdn.ampproject .org/ ...