The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) announced its verdicton the controversial data sharing-agreement between DeepMind and the Royal Free London NHS Trust on Monday after a year long investigation.
The deal (replaced with a new one last November) was signed to help DeepMind test and develop a kidney monitoring app called Streams, which sends an alert to a clinician’s smartphone if a patient’s condition deteriorates. It also allows clinicians to view a patient’s medical records and see where patients are being looked after. It doesn’t use any of the AI that DeepMind is known for.
Through the agreement, DeepMind was able to see whether people are HIV-positive as well as details of drug overdoses and abortions. DeepMind insists that it has never shared patient data with parent company Google.
DeepMind and the Royal Free tried to justify the data-sharing deal by saying that “implied consent” was assumed because the Streams app was delivering “direct care” to patients.
