From what I can tell the substance is in the latter half of the article:
> Streams began as a collaboration with the Royal Free Hospital in London to assist in the management of acute kidney injury.
> However, it emerged that neither the health trust nor DeepMind had informed patients about the vast amount of data it had been using.
> DeepMind Health went on to work with Moorfields Eye Hospital, with machine-learning algorithms scouring images of eyes for signs of conditions such as macular degeneration.
> In July 2017, the UK's Information Commissioner ruled the UK hospital trust involved in the initial Streams trial had broken UK privacy law for failing to tell patients about the way their data was being used.
Still not super clear what happened but it appears that google simply failed to tell patients about how it was using their data, which seems to be a violation of UK privacy law.
I'm sure to some people this does not seem super concerning, and to others seems very concerning. In my opinion this is a mistake that should just not be made. The data privacy cultures in tech and healthcare are so incredibly different. Personal healthcare data is regulated arguably too heavily, while in tech it seems that privacy doesn't exist. It seems quite irresponsible to me that such a high profile company as google, that already has a reputation for lax privacy practices, would mess up such a seemingly simple compliance issue. It suggests they simply either dont care, are negligent, or think they can get away with whatever they want
That said, the reporting on this seems to be egregiously sensationalist and fearmongering, and potentially factually incorrect. My initial reaction to that kind of language is to recoil and it makes me side with google rather than the reporter, although upon further consideration it seems clear to me that google / both google and the journalist are in the wrong. But i am probably in the minority and other people may respond to this kind of journalism. If it takes this level of aggressive journalism to raise public awareness of privacy concerns in healthcare, then maybe i support it...
> Streams began as a collaboration with the Royal Free Hospital in London to assist in the management of acute kidney injury.
> However, it emerged that neither the health trust nor DeepMind had informed patients about the vast amount of data it had been using.
> DeepMind Health went on to work with Moorfields Eye Hospital, with machine-learning algorithms scouring images of eyes for signs of conditions such as macular degeneration.
> In July 2017, the UK's Information Commissioner ruled the UK hospital trust involved in the initial Streams trial had broken UK privacy law for failing to tell patients about the way their data was being used.
Still not super clear what happened but it appears that google simply failed to tell patients about how it was using their data, which seems to be a violation of UK privacy law.
I'm sure to some people this does not seem super concerning, and to others seems very concerning. In my opinion this is a mistake that should just not be made. The data privacy cultures in tech and healthcare are so incredibly different. Personal healthcare data is regulated arguably too heavily, while in tech it seems that privacy doesn't exist. It seems quite irresponsible to me that such a high profile company as google, that already has a reputation for lax privacy practices, would mess up such a seemingly simple compliance issue. It suggests they simply either dont care, are negligent, or think they can get away with whatever they want
That said, the reporting on this seems to be egregiously sensationalist and fearmongering, and potentially factually incorrect. My initial reaction to that kind of language is to recoil and it makes me side with google rather than the reporter, although upon further consideration it seems clear to me that google / both google and the journalist are in the wrong. But i am probably in the minority and other people may respond to this kind of journalism. If it takes this level of aggressive journalism to raise public awareness of privacy concerns in healthcare, then maybe i support it...