Google denies using private health data

Bloomberg

Google’s top health and cloud executives said the company isn’t misusing health data from one of the biggest US health-care providers, pushing back against news reports that have triggered criticism from politicians of the search giant.
Google employees only have access to patient information in order to build a new internal search tool for the Ascension hospital network, said David Feinberg, head of Google Health. No patient data is being used for Google’s artificial intelligence research, he added.
The Alphabet Inc company’s contract is governed by US health privacy law that permits it access to patient records solely for the task of organising Ascension’s various health records systems and building a tool to make them easier to search, Feinberg said.
“That’s all we’re allowed to do and that’s all we are doing,” he said.
Google’s deal with Ascension has been under scrutiny since the Wall Street Journal reported the company was collecting identifiable data on millions of Ascension patients and using it to build new products. It reported that the US Department of Health and Human Services’ civil rights office was starting an inquiry into the situation.