More than 1.6 million confidential digital medical records are said to have beenhe company, which specializes in artificial intelligence and was acquired by Google in 2014, is alleged to have collected and processed more than 6 million confidential digital medical records without the patients' knowledge. Now those affected are taking legal action before the High Court of England and Wales.
The British law firm Mishcon de Reya announced the class action back in September 2021. Background: The British hospital operator Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust transmitted patient data to the Google subsidiary DeepMind. According to the law firm, this data was processed in breach of data protection laws.
Why was the data transmitted?
In 2015, DeepMind developed the smartphone app Stream. The application was designed to detect acute kidney disease based on registered patient data. According to Google at the time, this type of early detection would lead to a reduction in avoidable deaths of up to 25 percent. For the clinical safety testing of the app, DeepMind agreed with the Royal Free NHS to transfer around 1.6 million medical records. Apparently without the knowledge and consent of the patients. Explosive: the data collected did not only relate to kidney disease. Personal information on HIV patients, drug addicts and women who have had abortions was also passed on to the Google subsidiary. DeepMind also received data on intensive care medicine, emergency departments and the daily activities of individual clinics.
Stream not criticized for the first time
Back in 2017, the British data protection authority complained that DeepMind had received data from a time when there was no cooperation with the Royal Free NHS. Affected patients could not have assumed that their data would be processed in this way. The class action lawsuit is now intended to clarify how the handling of medical data should be regulated in future. Tech giant Google has already announced its intention to discontinue operation of the app. However, it is unclear what this means for the medical records that have already been transferred and the patients affected.
