UK Agency Finds 'Shortcomings' With Hospital Network Sharing Patient Data With Google
The U.K.'s Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust "failed to comply" with the nation's data protection law when it provided personal data of about 1.6 million patients to Google, said the Information Commissioner's Office, the country's data protection watchdog, in a…
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Monday news release. “Our investigation found a number of shortcomings in the way patient records were shared for this trial. Patients would not have reasonably expected their information to have been used in this way, and the Trust could and should have been far more transparent with patients as to what was happening," said Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham. It asked the trust or hospital network to make changes to comply with the law. The data shared was part of a "trial to test an alert, diagnosis and detection system for acute kidney injury," the release said. In 2016, the trust forged a five-year deal with Google DeepMind, an artificial intelligence unit, to develop an app for better detection. The trust said in a statement it fully cooperated with the ICO investigation that began more than a year ago and welcomes guidance on how patient data can be processed to test new technology. "We are now doing much more to keep our patients informed about how their data is used," it added. Google didn't comment. ICO said the data protection law isn't a hindrance to innovation but "it does need to be considered wherever people's data is being used."