According to The Wall Street Journal, Google is partnering with one of the largest US healthcare systems on a project to collect and analyze detailed information about the personal health of millions of people in 21 states. The initiative, code-named Project Nightingale, appears to be the search giant's biggest attempt to gain ground in the healthcare industry by processing patient medical data. Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft are also actively pushing healthcare-related features, although they haven't made such big deals in this area yet.
Google began the Nightingale project secretly last year with the St. Louis-based Ascension, a Catholic network of 2600 hospitals, doctors' offices and other institutions, with data exchanges with the search giant growing rapidly since this summer, according to internal documents leaked to reporters. of the year. The information included in the initiative includes lab results, doctors' diagnoses and hospitalization records, among other categories - full medical history along with patient names and dates of birth. The tech giant is partnering with Ascension on an ambitious project to capture patient data for treatment and information management.
Neither patients nor physicians were aware of such a large-scale exchange of medical data. According to a WSJ source, at least 150 Google employees already have access to most of the data on tens of millions of patients. In a press release issued after The Wall Street Journal reported on Project Nightingale on Monday, both companies said the initiative is in line with federal health law and provides strong patient data protection.
Sources say some Ascension employees are confused about how data is collected and shared, both technically and ethically. But privacy experts said the practice is indeed permissible under federal law. This is the Health Insurance Data Movement and Accountability Act of 1996, which allows hospitals to share data with business partners without notifying patients, as long as the information is only used to help the organization perform its health care functions.
In this case, Google is using the data in part to develop new machine learning-based software that promises a personalized experience and can advise individual patients on changes to their treatment. Internal documents show that employees at Alphabet (Google's parent company) have access to patient information, including some at Google Brain, the research science arm that is credited with the company's biggest achievements.
Google Cloud President Tariq Shaukat said the company's goal in healthcare is to ultimately improve outcomes, cut costs and save lives. Ascension Executive Vice President Eduardo Conrado added, "As the healthcare industry continues to evolve rapidly, we must change to better meet the needs and expectations of those we serve, as well as our physicians and healthcare providers."
As the docs show, Google's ultimate goal is to create a one-stop search tool for aggregating disparate patient data and putting it in one place. The project is being developed in the cloud division of Google, which is inferior to competitors like Amazon and Microsoft in terms of market share. Ascension, for its part, isn't just focused on improving patient care: the documents show that the company hopes to get data that will indicate the need for more tests or allow it to raise more money from patients in other ways. Ascension is also looking to get a system that is faster than the existing decentralized e-books.
Google this month for $2,1 billion to Fitbit, which makes watches and bracelets that track health information such as heart rate. The company has said it will be transparent about any Fitbit data it collects. And in September, Google announced a 10-year deal with Mayo Clinic to obtain the genetic, medical, and financial records of the hospital system. Mayo officials said at the time that any personal data would be deleted before it could be used to develop new software in the bowels of Google.
Source: 3dnews.ru