Last year during the early stages of the medical trial details on about 1.6 million patients was provided to Google’s DeepMind division that was used to develop and refine an alert, diagnosis and detection system named Streams so as to spot when patients are at risk of developing acute kidney injury (AKI).
The ICO censured the Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust about data handed over during trials of a novel way to detect kidney injuries to which the hospital authorities did not tell patients about the use of their data. And when asked about trust’s intention they said they would tackle “shortcomings” in its data-handling. It was “inexcusable” that patients had not been told about what had been happening to their data.
The Controversy:
- It was in February of 2016 when the agreement between the DeepMind first became public.
- It caused controversy over the amount of patient information being shared without public consultation.
- In March this year, it has been founded in the academic report the inadequacies in the way information had been handed over.
- Google DeepMind then reported “major errors” that misrepresented the way Royal Free had used patient’s data.
The Opinions:
Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, information commissioner threw light on the attempts made to manage the creative use of data by saying that the price of innovation did not need to be the erosion of fundamental privacy rights.
The Royal Free said it had co-operated fully with the ICO’s investigation and has accepted the guidance received to use patient data in future trials and was “pleased” that the ICO had let it continue the app to help patients. They passionately believe in the power of technology to improve care for patients and that had always been the driving force for their Streams app.
Google welcomed the “thoughtful resolution” and added this will definitely reflect on its involvement with the hospitals.
Dominic King, DeepMind’s clinical lead on health, and Mustafa Suleyman, DeepMind’s co-founder opinioned that they had underestimated the complexity of the NHS and of the rules around patient data, as well as the potential fears about a well-known tech company working in health and then further added that they got that wrong, and they need to do better.
The pledge of the trust:
- sort out the legal basis for future trials between DeepMind and other companies
- to see how it performed and share the details with the ICO, auditing of the trials
- For future trials, setting out provisions to perform its duty of confidence to patients
- Also, to assess the impact that the trial had on privacy of the patients.