Google denies misusing data from provider of healthcare

New York

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 (AI) 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, Mr Feinberg said.

"That's all we're allowed to do and that's all we are doing."

Google's deal with Ascension has been under scrutiny since TheWall Street Journal reported on Monday the company was collecting identifiable data on millions of Ascension patients and using it to build new products.

On Tuesday, the paper reported that the civil rights office of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was opening an inquiry into the situation.

Thomas Kurian, chief executive officer of Google Cloud, declined to comment on the alleged inquiry and representatives of the HHS did not respond to a request for comment.

Ascension's health data is being stored on Google Cloud servers but sequestered so only Ascension employees can access it, said Google.

Mr Kurian said: "All data is logically silo-ed to Ascension and housed within a virtual private space encrypted with dedicated keys.

"Google does not sell, share or otherwise combine data from Ascension with any other data."

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, said Google's activity was a "blatant disregard for privacy" and "beyond shameful".

News articles and social media posts have questioned why Google needs to collect patient information and speculated that the search giant could eventually use the data for advertising.

Mr Kurian and Mr Feinberg denied this in a joint interview.

When Google does work with other companies on AI research, it always strips out personally-identifying information, Mr Kurian said.

"We never actually have Google employees understand individual patients' data when it goes into the model. We have other technologies that de-identify it."

Mr Feinberg said his team is tapping Google's expertise in search technology to build a tool that can scan through Ascension's multiple electronic health record systems and make it easy for doctors and nurses to find the exact data they need when they need it.

The project is still in its infancy, but could eventually become a standalone product that Google could sell to other health-care providers and entities, he said.

"If we can help solve the information overload and the pressures on doctors and nurses, then there would be a huge benefit to a lot of people in those types of tools. To me, that is actually really, really exciting." BLOOMBERG