Google's Project Nightingale Raises Health Data Privacy Concerns

An ongoing collaboration between Google and Ascension, dubbed Project Nightingale and formally announced this week, has allowed the tech giant to access to tens of millions of patients’ health records, raising privacy concerns.Although Project Nightingale began quietly last year when Google and the St. Louis-based, 2,600-hospital health system formed a relationship to share patient data, the organizations officially announced the partnership on Monday.The project grants Google employees access to patients protected health information, including lab results, doctor diagnoses and hospitalization records essentially a complete health history, including patient names and dates of birth.Google will use the data to design new artificial intelligence and machine-learning software to zero in on individual patients to suggest changes to their care, while providing its cloud services and G Suite tools to Ascension, according to Tariq Shaukat, M.S., president of industry products and solutions at Google Cloud.