I guess we could always simply leave this all up to Google .. eg, their 
DeepMind Health – Streams app


Google 'betrays patient trust' with DeepMind Health move

Moving healthcare subsidiary into main company breaks pledge that ‘data will 
not be connected to Google accounts’

By Alex Hern @alexhern  Wed 14 Nov 2018 23.14 AEDT
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/14/google-betrays-patient-trust-deepmind-healthcare-move?


Google has been accused of breaking promises to patients, after the company 
announced it would be moving a healthcare-focused subsidiary, DeepMind Health, 
into the main arm of the organisation.

The restructure, critics argue, breaks a pledge DeepMind made when it started 
working with the NHS that “data will never be connected to Google accounts or 
services”.

The change has also resulted in the dismantling of an independent review board, 
created to oversee the company’s work with the healthcare sector, with Google 
arguing that the board was too focused on Britain to provide effective 
oversight for a newly global body.

Google says the restructure is necessary to allow DeepMind’s flagship health 
app, Streams, to scale up globally.

The app, which was created to help doctors and nurses monitor patients for AKI, 
a severe form of kidney injury, has since grown to offer a full digital 
dashboard for patient records.

“Our vision is for Streams to now become an AI-powered assistant for nurses and 
doctors everywhere – combining the best algorithms with intuitive design, all 
backed up by rigorous evidence,” DeepMind said, announcing the transfer.

“The team working within Google, alongside brilliant colleagues from across the 
organisation, will help make this vision a reality.”

DeepMind Health was previously part of the AI-focused research group DeepMind, 
which is officially a sibling to Google, with both divisions being owned by the 
organisation’s holding company Alphabet.

But the transfer and vision for Streams looks hard to reconcile with DeepMind’s 
previous comments about the app.

In July 2016, following criticism that the company’s data-sharing agreement 
with the NHS was overly broad, co-founder Mustafa Suleyman wrote: “We’ve been 
clear from the outset that at no stage will patient data ever be linked or 
associated with Google accounts, products or services.”

Now that Streams is a Google product itself, that promise appears to have been 
broken, says privacy researcher Julia Powles: “Making this about semantics is a 
sleight of hand. DeepMind said it would never connect Streams with Google. The 
whole Streams app is now a Google product. That is an atrocious breach of 
trust, for an already beleaguered product.”

A DeepMind spokesperson emphasised that the core of the promise remains intact: 
“All patient data remains under our partners’ strict control, and all decisions 
about its use lie with them. This data remains subject to strict audit and 
access controls and its processing remains subject to both our contracts and 
data protection legislation. The move to Google does not affect this.”

The restructure has also resulted in the termination of the review board, which 
was largely staffed by British experts.

The DeepMind spokesperson said: “The independent reviewers panel was a 
governance structure for DeepMind Health as a UK entity. Now Streams is going 
to part of a global effort this is unlikely to be the right structure in the 
future.”



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