Google Gathering Health Care Data on Millions of Americans with Secret Project Nightingale
Named Project Nightingale, the initiative is one of the largest efforts by Silicon Valley tech companies to enter the lucrative health careindustry.
Louis-based health care system that is the second largest in the U.S., to collect and crunch health care data on a massive scale.
The data involved includes lab results, doctor diagnoses and hospitalization records, as well as patient names and dates of birth.
Google aims to design new software with the data that will suggest improvements in patient care directly to individual patients.
Ascension, a Catholic hospital network, wants to use the data to improve patient care, mining the data to suggest additional tests for patients.
According to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, hospitals may share patient data with business partners without notifying patients as long as that information is used only to help the covered entity carry out its health-care functions.
Nevertheless, several Ascension employees voiced concerns regarding the ways Google and Ascension are gathering the data, according to internal documents reviewed by theJournal. While Ascension did not immediately comment on the report, a spokesman for Google said the project is completely in line with federal law.
About 150 employees across Googles platform currently have access to specific personal data collected as part of Project Nightingale.
Meanwhile, Senator Elizabeth Warren has threatened to break up Facebook and other social media giants if she is elected president in 2020.
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