Google Nightingale

2019: Data collection for the project

On November 11, 2019 it became known that Google gathers medical data of millions of Americans for the new project under the name Nightingale.

The initiative is directed to implementation of Google in the health care industry. The project forms on the basis of information on patients of the Ascension company having the medical institutions in 21 states of the USA. At the same time people did not know that their data are transferred to corporation, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Google gathers medical data of millions of Americans for the new project under the name Nightingale.

Among the data which were included in this project there were results of laboratory researches, complete stories of diseases with names of patients and their dates of birth, records about hospitalization and diagnoses.

Google uses the received data for creation of a versatile search tool which would allow to aggregate separate data on patients and also for software development, based on machine learning and artificial intelligence. These products in Google are expected to be sold to partners from other countries.

By November, 2019 about the state of health of a great number of Americans 150 employees of Google have an information access at least.

Lawyers of the company told that their developers have full authority to collect data of patients of hospitals — it allegedly allows to do the law on information exchange and accountability of health insurance.

According to the legislation of the USA, hospitals can transfer such information to the business partners without the consent of patients if it is necessary for physicians for accomplishment of the duties.

According to WSJ, Nightingale is the largest among all attempts of giants of Silicon Valley to get access to personal medical data. Amazon and Microsoft also actively are engaged in developments in the field of health care, but they did not manage to achieve such results.^[1]

Notes