US privacy laws need to be updated, especially after Google signs a deal with a major hospital chain, medical ethics expert Arthur Kaplan said on Wednesday.
“Now we have electronic medical records, huge amounts of data, and it’s like asking a navigation system from a WWI plane to guide us to the space shuttle,” said Kaplan, professor at the Grossman School of New York University Medicine. said “The news with Shepard Smith.” “We need to update our privacy and informed consent requirements.”
On Wednesday, Google’s cloud unit and hospital chain HCA Healthcare announced a contract that, according to the Wall Street Journal, gives Google access to patient records. The tech giant said it will use it to develop algorithms to monitor patients and help doctors make better decisions.
Jonathan Perlin, HCA’s chief medical officer, told the Journal that the company will remove any identifying information before giving the data to Google so it won’t know who you are. HCA collects data from 32 million patient visits each year and has more than 2,000 locations in 20 states.
But Kaplan told host Shepard Smith that he was concerned that a company like Google, which does a lot of commercial advertising, could correlate and potentially sell the health system information.
“They may not have your name, but sure enough they can find out which subgroup and subpopulation is best by promoting you,” Kaplan said.
Neither Google nor HCA responded to CNBC’s request for comment.
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