Google Taking Over Health Records Raises Patient Privacy Fears

Three years ago, artificial intelligence company DeepMind embarked on a landmark effort to transform health care in the U.K. Now plans by owner Alphabet Inc. to wrap the partnership into its Google search engine business are tripping alarm bells about privacy. Data protection advocates cried foul when the company reversed course on an earlier pledge to keep DeepMind Health, which taps millions of British medical records to monitor and diagnose disease, separate from Google. This month Alphabet said it plans to consolidate the businesses.

Dr Julia PowlesWhile Google says it will continue to ring-fence the patient data, critics say the potential for abuse is significant: What if the company later backtracks and pairs medical records with its search engine and Gmail app, which harbor extensive information on users' daily lives? That would present a formidable risk to privacy, they say, and could cost patients and providers dearly if the company converted the data into high-priced products. "Google turns patient data into secret intellectual property that ensures treating future patients will be very, very expensive," said Deborah Peel, head of Patient Privacy Rights, a U.S.-based advocacy group. "Corporations are governed by profits and Google Health is all about profits."...

Last year, the U.K. government privacy watchdog said an NHS hospital had illegally sent 1.6 million patient records to DeepMind to develop Streams, fanning public fears about data safety. In June, a group of outside experts DeepMind Health appointed to scrutinize its work urged the unit to "entrench" its separation from Alphabet. After the consolidation with Google was announced, Julia Powles, a researcher at New York University School of Law and a critic of DeepMind's work with the NHS, scorched the reversal. "DeepMind said it'd never connect Streams with Google," she wrote. "The whole Streams app is now a Google product! That is an atrocious breach of trust."...