Google given access to healthcare data of 1.6M patients

Artificial intelligence company DeepMind, owned by Google, has been given access to the healthcare data of 1.6 million patients from three hospitals, reports The Guardian.

The London-based company is being provided with patient information that includes people who are HIV-positive, details of drug overdoses, abortions and patient data from the past five years, according to a report by the New Scientist. The transfer of information is part of an agreement with the Royal Free NHS trust, which runs the Barnet, Chase Farm and Royal Free hospitals.

The company announced plans in February to deveolp software in partnership with NHS hospitals that would alert staff to patients at risk of deterioration and death through kidney failure.

Even with the support of Lord Darzi, former director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London, the agreement has raised concerns about Google’s move into the healthcare field.

Patients would not be aware of their data being made available. A spokesperson for the Royal Free trust said “our arrangement with DeepMind is the standard NHS information-sharing agreement set out by NHS England’s corporate information governance department and is the same as the other 1,500 agreements with third-party organizations that process NHS patient data.”

Patients are able to drop out of the data-sharing system at any time.