UK gave Google’s DeepMind access to patient data without legal basis

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UK gave Google’s DeepMind access to patient data without legal basis

May 18th, 2017

Awake Goy

Google’s DeepMind AI wing was given access to the personal medical records of 1.6 million NHS patients on an “inappropriate legal basis,” the UK’s top data protection adviser to the health service has said.

In a letter sent to the Royal Free Hospital’s medical director professor Stephen Powis, and seen by Sky News, the National Data Guardian Dame Fiona Caldicott—whose job it is to scrutinise the government when it hands over NHS patient records to private companies—concluded that the decision to share the data under implied consent was wrong.

The London-based Royal Free Hospital (RFH) inked a controversial deal with Google last year, allowing its Streams AI app to be tested on the medical records of sufferers of acute kidney damage. It apparently helps clinicians to quickly administer potentially life-saving treatment.

However, Caldicott challenged the hospital’s claim that the transfer of 1.6 million identifiable patient records to DeepMind had been processed as “implied consent for direct care.”

In mid-2016, the RFH told the NHS data adviser that the Google app “is not currently in use,” adding that “only small scale testing of the pre-production prototype version of Streams has taken place to date.” At the time, the design and functionality of the app was being refined by Google, and the “clinical safety verification” process was ongoing. The hospital said that Streams “was not, and will not be relied on for patient care until this process has concluded.”