Google is being sued in the United Kingdom for its usage of 1.6 million people’s sensitive medical information.
Google sued in the High Court for exploiting 1.6 million Britons’ NHS data ‘without their knowledge or consent.’ The data was obtained in 2015 from the Royal Free NHS Trust in London with the aim of testing a smartphone app called Streams by the company’s artificial intelligence branch, DeepMind.
Following an examination by the Information Commissioner’s Office, the Royal Free NHS Trust in London, which handed Google the patient data, was previously notified that the move was illegal.
How did Google gain access to medical records?
In order to test a smartphone app that may detect acute kidney damage, Google obtained data from 1.6 million patients, some of whom had only visited A&E in the previous five years.
The Royal Free NHS Trust later received a discount on the smartphone software, which is aimed to address the 25% of preventable fatalities from acute kidney injury if they are discovered early enough.
According to a leaked letter from the NHS’s most senior data security adviser, Royal Free released the patients’ data on an “improper legal basis,” according to Sky News.
The contract was later deemed to be illegal by the UK’s privacy authority, which chose not to sanction Royal Free because of a lack of direction for the industry.
DeepMind stated at the time of the statement by the Information Commissioner’s Office that its “findings are about the Royal Free, [but] we need to reflect on our own actions too”.
What will the outcome of the High Court case be?
The representative action comes as the British government considers how the commercial sector may access NHS data to help patients and the country’s booming AI industry.
“I hope that this case can achieve a fair outcome and closure for the many patients whose confidential records were – without the patients’ knowledge – obtained and used by these large tech companies.” Mr Prismall added.
