The report came in public when a Whistleblower who is working with Google and Ascension to collect data of millions of people in America. The project is known as Project Nightingale, and the aim is to make an artificial intelligence from the data collected, which will help the people for the betterment of their health care.
What is Project Nightingale?
It is an initiative of Google in partnership with Ascension, which is known in America as a non-profit health organisation. Currently, Ascension is having more than 150 hospitals and around 50 senior doctors working with them.
The objective behind the project is to collect the data of the people in America and create artificial intelligence which will help people in a better way to take care of their health. The data that is collected includes hospital records of the patients, lab results, MRI report and all other information which is related to the health of the patient.
What makes the project different from the rest?
Patient of whom the data is getting collected is not aware of this. Google and Ascension were secretly collecting information about the health data of the people without their permission. The news came in public when a person who is working in the project showed the concern about Project Nightingale. Name of the person is not disclosed and is a whistleblower of the project. It informed The Guardian about the project and how data of 50 million people are getting secretly transferred to Google. The health care provider that is helping in the transfer of data is Ascension, who is a second-largest healthcare provider in the U.S.
The Ascension posted a video where it showed the files of millions of people which contained their health data. Data includes full information of the patient and consists of the complete medical history, which can now be accessed by Google.
Unlike the other projects for improving the health system in India, Project Nightingale is a secret project where people were not informed that their information is being accessed. This process is known as de-identification.
Not only patients but also the doctors were unaware that the data is getting transferred to the staffs of Google. Google in a blog post said Project Nightingale, “a business arrangement to help a provider with the latest technology, similar to the work we do with dozens of other healthcare providers.”
After the report went public, Google ran into its defence and said that even though they have access of the medical report, they are following the regulatory privacy standards which are the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.
To bring clarity among the people and public, Google informed about the project and in its statement informed that as per the terms of partnership between Google and Ascension, the data that will be collected and given to the Google staff will be used only for the purpose for which it is collected, i.e., for improving Health care system in U.S. and will not be used in any other manner or will not be combined with any of the data that Google has previously collected about their consumers or in future it will collect.
To avoid the havoc and allegation of privacy infringement, when the anonymous made the report public, Google issued a public statement of their Project Nightingale.
