Google's Secret 'Project Nightingale' Gathers Personal Health Data on Millions of Americans--Update

By Rob Copeland

Google is teaming with one of the country's largest health-care systems on a secret project to collect and crunch the detailed personal health information of millions of Americans across 21 states, according to people familiar with the matter and internal documents.

The initiative, code-named "Project Nightingale," appears to be the largest in a series of efforts by Silicon Valley giants to gain access to personal health data and establish a toehold in the massive health-care industry. Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are also aggressively pushing into healthcare, though they haven't yet struck deals of this scope.

Google launched the effort last year with St. Louis-based Ascension, the country's second-largest health system.

The data involved in Project Nightingale pertains to lab results, doctor diagnoses and hospitalization records, among other categories, and amounts to a complete health history, including patient names and dates of birth.

Neither patients nor doctors have been notified. At least 150 Google employees already have access to much of the data on tens of millions of patients, according to a person familiar with the matter and documents.

Some Ascension employees have raised questions about the way the data is being collected and shared, according to documents, but privacy experts said it appeared to be permissible under federal law. That law, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, generally allows hospitals to share data with business partners without telling patients, as long as the information is used "only to help the covered entity carry out its health-care functions."

Google in this case is using the data, in part, to design new software, underpinned by advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning, that zeros in on individual patients to suggest changes to their care. Staffers across Alphabet Inc., Google's parent, have access to the patient information, documents show, including some employees of Google Brain, a research science division credited with some of the company's biggest breakthroughs.

A Google spokeswoman said the project is fully compliant with federal health law and includes robust protections for patient data. An Ascension spokesman had no immediate comment..

Write to Rob Copeland at rob.copeland@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 11, 2019 14:08 ET (19:08 GMT)

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