Project Nightingale – Google Accessed Health Data of Millions in US

Google is considered to be the second-largest health care system in the United  States. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google has gathered and crunched data on millions of Americans across 21 states. One of the initiative projects,“PROJECT NIGHTINGALE” is described as “the largest in a series of efforts by Silicon Valley giants to gain access to personal health data and establish a toehold in the massive health-care industry.”  But it does not turn out to have the privacy-protecting constraints. Amazon and Microsoft are also known to be merged with the medical industries.

Google analyzes the health data of millions of patients without seeking their consent and claiming it does not need their consent either. According to the National Health Service in the UK, the search engine giant has partnered with the second-largest health system in the United States.

Google is using the data of the patient which covers everything from lab results to doctor diagnoses to hospitalization records and connect it to patients name along with their date of birth then they develop a new software which propagates to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop a valuable insight into health issues and even predict further health issues for that person.

The auditor of The DeepMind accepted Google’s argument that it needs to use very large databases of real patients’ data for safety reasons although it did not dig into the basis for that claim. Google does not even have a formal deletion policy. The audit also continuously made the argument that because the hospital system had data going back many years to Google was a mere duplicate.

Google hired Karen DeSalvo as the new role of the chief health officer. She was previously the national coordinator for health IT under US president Barack Obama. Later, Google hired former FDA Commission Robert Califf to look after policy and health-related strategies. Both of them were supposed to report to former hospital executive David Feinberg.

Google is doing this thing to design new software, underpinned by advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning that zeroes in on Individual patients to suggest changes to their care.

Google stated it’s painting with Ascension which is very similar to what it used to be already doing with dozens of alternative fitness care supplies. It traditionally launched a remark on its paintings with Google the past days. Ascension also stated it’s objectives to fortify the equipment utilized by each sufferer and caregivers (or the people involved in nursing of others) in addition to explore the synthetic intelligence system.

The Google Ascension tried to buy Fitbit for $2.1 billion in a deal awaiting regulatory approval. Fitbit is a device that is used among other things to track health and Google wanted to use Fitbit to strengthen its existing wear OS platform.

Thus, this is how Google is affecting our daily lives and hope in the mere future they would bring out more such applications and features which would help improve human lives.