At the last minute, Google abandoned a plan to issue more than 100,000 images of human chest x-rays from more than 30,000 patients, many of them with lung disease, in partnership with the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Government concerns about privacy, according to a report in The Washington Post.
The project, which began in 2017, was aimed at demonstrating Google's capabilities in cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
The project was canceled two days ahead of schedule, after the National Institutes of Health (NIH) communicated with Google to tell them that some X-ray images still contained personal information, such as the dates on which X-rays were photographed and the distinctive jewelry that patients wore when they were taken. X-ray images.
There was concern that the project might conflict with the Health Insurance and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, a federal law that regulates the security and privacy of some medical information, while Google said it was compliant with the law.
A spokesman for the research giant said: "We are keen to protect patient data and ensure that personal information remains private and safe, and in order to protect personal privacy, we chose not to host the data set of the National Institutes of Health, and we deleted all the images from our internal systems and did not continue to work with the National Institutes of Health.
Earlier this week, Google unveiled a partnership with Ascension, the second-largest healthcare system in the United States, which collects patient information from millions of Americans, to provide smarter recommendations to doctors.
It includes data on laboratory results, diagnoses and hospital records, and also includes patient names and dates of birth.The initiative has drawn criticism from politicians and prompted a federal investigation by the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Google is investing more in health services and earlier this month bought Fitbit, a wearable fitness tracker, for $ 2.1 billion.
The research giant has been criticized for its handling of patient information in the past. Two years ago, in collaboration with the University of Chicago, it established a medical center that allowed it to use patient data and health records in an effort to improve predictive analysis.
The company, the university and the medical center in July were sued after allegations that the medical center shared the records with Google without stripping them of identifying information, so that patient records contain personal information, such as doctor's notes.
For the X-ray project, Google failed to properly scrutinize data on privacy issues because it was quick to publish the public announcement.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) cleared identification information and partnered with another large technology company, Cloud Storage, for the X-ray project.
Box said the National Institutes of Health and several other leading healthcare organizations use Box to manage secure and collaborative content across the cloud to take advantage of our compliance standards, such as HIPAA, and advanced privacy controls.