We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use. Sure, Google knows a lot. But imagine the company one day indexing your personal health records. It's starting to happen for patients at Ascension, the largest Catholic healthcare system in the US. On Monday, the nonprofit announced a partnership with Google to run Ascension's IT healthcare systems over the company's cloud computing services. However, the partnership was announced hours before The Wall Street Journal published a story on how Google and Ascension have been allegedly working on the project in secret since last year —without notifying patients or doctors. The main takeaway: the tech giant has already been processing the health records for tens of millions of patients, including their lab results, doctor diagnoses, along with patient names and dates of birth. "It (Ascension) also hopes to mine data to order up more tests or determine where it might be able to make more money from an individual patient, documents show," The Journal reports. The story has been setting off privacy alarms when Google already has a notorious reputation for vacuuming up people' personal details and location data in creepy ways. Much of that data collection can occur over the Chrome browser, Google Maps, Gmail, the Android OS and Google Home smart speakers. According to The Journal, the company is now designing a search tool to aggregate patient data and host it over one platform. However, Ascension is characterizing the partnership as all about upgrading its operations with the latest technology. The nonprofit's announcement is vague on the details, but patients can expect easier ways to interact with the healthcare provider online. In addition, doctors will be given new tools and insight on how to better predict and manage patient needs. The partnership also represents a big win for Google Cloud, which has been competing against Amazon's and Microsoft's cloud computing businesses for enterprise customers. "By working in partnership with leading healthcare systems like Ascension, we hope to transform the delivery of healthcare through the power of the cloud, data analytics, machine learning, and modern productivity tools —ultimately improving outcomes, reducing costs, and saving lives," Google Cloud president Tariq Shaukat said in the announcement. So don't be surprised if Google strikes up other partnerships with health care providers. Earlier this month, the tech giant also announced it was buying fitness tracker maker Fitbit for $2.1 billion, giving it additional access to millions of users' health-related data. Whether you think the data collection is disturbing may depend on how much you trust Google. But according to Ascension, the partnership with the search giant is HIPAA compliant and "underpinned by a robust data security and protection effort." Nevertheless, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that some Ascension employees have raised questions "about the way the data is being collected and shared, both from a technological and ethical perspective." Reportedly, Google is using the partnership as a test bed to train the company's AI algorithms on suggesting changes to a patient's medical care. But how Google is processing the patient medical records remains unknown. Under HIPAA, encryption is only recommended, not required. The Wall Street Journal is also reporting at least 150 employees have access to data on Ascension's patients. "This is scary. HIPAA wasn't written with privacy protection as its main goal," tweeted Irene Knapp, a former Google software engineer. "It's a lot more permissive than people realize." Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use. Sure, Google knows a lot. But imagine the company one day indexing your personal health records. It's starting to happen for patients at Ascension, the largest Catholic healthcare system in the US. On Monday, the nonprofit announced a partnership with Google to run Ascension's IT healthcare systems over the company's cloud computing services. However, the partnership was announced hours before The Wall Street Journal published a story on how Google and Ascension have been allegedly working on the project in secret since last year —without notifying patients or doctors. The main takeaway: the tech giant has already been processing the health records for tens of millions of patients, including their lab results, doctor diagnoses, along with patient names and dates of birth. "It (Ascension) also hopes to mine data to order up more tests or determine where it might be able to make more money from an individual patient, documents show," The Journal reports. The story has been setting off privacy alarms when Google already has a notorious reputation for vacuuming up people' personal details and location data in creepy ways. Much of that data collection can occur over the Chrome browser, Google Maps, Gmail, the Android OS and Google Home smart speakers. According to The Journal, the company is now designing a search tool to aggregate patient data and host it over one platform. However, Ascension is characterizing the partnership as all about upgrading its operations with the latest technology. The nonprofit's announcement is vague on the details, but patients can expect easier ways to interact with the healthcare provider online. In addition, doctors will be given new tools and insight on how to better predict and manage patient needs. The partnership also represents a big win for Google Cloud, which has been competing against Amazon's and Microsoft's cloud computing businesses for enterprise customers. "By working in partnership with leading healthcare systems like Ascension, we hope to transform the delivery of healthcare through the power of the cloud, data analytics, machine learning, and modern productivity tools —ultimately improving outcomes, reducing costs, and saving lives," Google Cloud president Tariq Shaukat said in the announcement. So don't be surprised if Google strikes up other partnerships with health care providers. Earlier this month, the tech giant also announced it was buying fitness tracker maker Fitbit for $2.1 billion, giving it additional access to millions of users' health-related data. Whether you think the data collection is disturbing may depend on how much you trust Google. But according to Ascension, the partnership with the search giant is HIPAA compliant and "underpinned by a robust data security and protection effort." Nevertheless, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that some Ascension employees have raised questions "about the way the data is being collected and shared, both from a technological and ethical perspective." Reportedly, Google is using the partnership as a test bed to train the company's AI algorithms on suggesting changes to a patient's medical care. But how Google is processing the patient medical records remains unknown. Under HIPAA, encryption is only recommended, not required. The Wall Street Journal is also reporting at least 150 employees have access to data on Ascension's patients. "This is scary. HIPAA wasn't written with privacy protection as its main goal," tweeted Irene Knapp, a former Google software engineer. "It's a lot more permissive than people realize." Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.