Google’s DeepMind made illegal deal for health data, says UK watchdog
A deal between UK hospitals and Google’s AI subsidiary DeepMind “failed to comply with data protection law,” according to the UK’s data watchdog. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) made its ruling today after a year-long investigation into the agreement, which saw DeepMind process some 1.6 million patient records belonging to UK citizens for the Royal Free Trust — a group of three London hospitals.
The deal was originally struck in 2015, and has since been superseded by a new agreement. At the time, DeepMind and the Royal Free said the data was being shared to develop an app named Streams, which would alert doctors if patients were at risk from a condition called acute kidney injury. An investigation by the New Scientist r…
