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Google’s medical data sharing partnership is a problem

 


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On May 26, Google and HCA Healthcare, a national hospital chain, announced a data-sharing partnership that provides Internet giants with access to numerous patient records and real-time medical information. But what the two companies are throwing as a win for improved patient care and outcomes is little win for consumers.

Google has a dark history of misusing personal data for profit. At least back to Project Nightingale, Google collects and monetizes sensitive patient data from millions of Americans. The HCA deal puts a huge amount of new patient data in the hands of Google, and some have already pointed out how similar the HCA deal is to the data sharing arrangements that underpinned Project Nightingale.

However, while the new HCA contract poses a major threat to consumer health data privacy, Washington DC is drawing attention elsewhere when it comes to data security. Since the deal was first announced, the United States has had to face an increasing trend in ransomware crime. Data privacy laws are lagging behind in the fight against ransomware attacks, and American consumers are left to protect themselves for themselves.

The discourse of our country does not take this new threat to the privacy of health data seriously enough. It seems that many are completely unaware of the threat. However, these data sharing agreements are not innocent. And in order for regulators to act as catalysts for further scrutiny of such efforts, they need to raise their level of awareness of the actual risks.

Data sharing agreements between large companies provide an opportunity to better understand patient outcome trends and then improve patient care decisions. As stated by HCA Chief Medical Officer, the new agreement is designed to create a central nervous system that assists in the interpretation of various signals in patient data. This may seem like a good enough benefit to negate other concerns, as those other concerns are rarely considered.

Consider for a moment that consumers are concerned about what risks already exist in patient data, who has the data, and how it will be used. For example, in 2019 alone, millions of individuals and businesses are at risk of exposing, stealing, or illegally disclosing 41.2 million medical records in 505 medical data breaches and misusing protected medical information. Was exposed. Therefore, it is clear that aggregating a large number of medical records into one entity increases the risk of exposing a large number of individuals to unauthorized data access.

However, privacy concerns are not just related to the fact that stolen data can harm patients and consumers. It is also linked to the simple reality that individuals feel uncomfortable about how personal data is acquired, stored, and used by entities that do not meaningfully agree to share information. ..

According to ThePew Research Foundation, more than half of Americans do not have a clear understanding of how data will be used after it is collected, and about 80% are advertisers and other social media. I am concerned about the amount of data that companies collect. Generally speaking, consumers do not have a firm grasp of how their information is being used, so informed decisions about who can access and how they can use it. Cannot be done.

According to a similar study, consumers feel powerless in the age of big data. Three-quarters of Americans say they have little control over the personal information they collect, and nine in ten are on Facebook and Google. In other words, consumers believe they don’t have much say about the privacy of their data, and they’re right.

Despite the potential benefits, combined with legitimate consumer concerns and massive data theft, agreements like those between Google and HCA are unwise. Data accessible to Google is anonymized and protected through Google’s cloud infrastructure, but is stored without the consent of patients whose deep personal information is at stake. This is because US privacy law allows hospitals to share patient information with contractors and researchers without the patient’s consent. Preventing patients from controlling access to their information in such a way, even when the information is anonymized, is a daunting task, regardless of potential health benefits.

Privacy concerns are often overlooked because patients and consumers feel that they are not properly prepared to protect their information. And what if companies could share personal information without their knowledge? It’s time for businesses to prioritize patient privacy and recognize the growing threat to autonomy, as represented by the aggregation and sharing of large amounts of data.

Hospitals may be able to improve care with a lot of new information, but leaders and the general public in these areas begin to ask more rigorous questions about how to obtain and use data and share such information. We need to shed bright light on our wisdom. Information with companies that monetize consumer data. There needs to be a more equal balance between innovation and privacy, and the agreement between Google and HCA only makes it difficult to achieve this goal.

Tom Kelly is President and CEO of IDX, a provider of consumer privacy services such as data breaches and IDX privacy based in Portland, Oregon. He is a Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur and cybersecurity technology expert.

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