BREAKING: Google Secretly Collecting Patient Medical Records in 21 States
Updated
The Wall Street Journal is reporting:
“Google is engaged with one of the U.S.’s largest health-care systems on a project to collect and crunch the detailed personal-health information of millions of people across 21 states.“
Internal documents show Google began an initiative, code-named ‘Project Nightingale,’ in secret last year with St. Louis-based Ascension, a Catholic chain of 2,600 hospitals, doctors’ offices and other facilities.
The Wall Street Journal goes on to report:
“The data involved in the initiative encompasses lab results, doctor diagnoses and hospitalization records, among other categories, and amounts to a complete health history, including patient names and dates of birth…Neither patients nor doctors have been notified. At least 150 Google employees already have access to much of the data on tens of millions of patients, according to a person familiar with the matter and the documents.“
After the Wall Street Journal broke the story, both Google and Ascension claimed the initiative is compliant with federal health law and protects patient data.
Google Cloud President Tariq Shaukat said the company’s goal for health care is centered on “ultimately improving outcomes, reducing costs, and saving lives.” Although appearing benevolent, under the guise of those same goals Google and other Big Tech outlets have implemented sweeping censorship of alternative health websites and conversations online.
Why are tech companies so interested in our health records?
Studies are already being done linking consenting users’ medical records with their Facebook activity. The result of one such study concludes Facebook status updates can predict health conditions providing “opportunities to use social media data to determine disease…and to conduct social media-based health interventions.”
Facebook, censoring alternative health information in its own right, is also connected to vaccine development through the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub.
Meanwhile, in 2016 British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline and Google’s parent company Alphabet announced at $712M joint venture in bioelectronics.
The website FierceBiotech reported,
“GSK has been working on this bioelectronic approach [which] aims to disrupt certain electronic signals in the body through tiny implanted devices in the hope of altering the pathways of a number of diseases and conditions.“
Can we trust Google with our health records? Why did they collect them in secret as the Wall Street Journal reports?