'Big Data, Big Tech, and Protecting Patient Privacy'

Quote:

'In Dinerstein v Google, a class action complaint filed in federal court in Illinois, Matt Dinerstein asserted that the University of Chicago violated his privacy by turning over his and thousands of other patients' EHR data to Google. The forms Dinerstein signed at the hospital stated that his medical records would not be disclosed to third parties for commercial purposes. Although most identifying information was removed, the records given to Google allegedly contained date stamps indicating the dates and times that services were rendered, as well as free-text notes from clinical visits. The complaint, which seeks money damages and a court order to stop the use and further transfer of patient records, alleges deceptive and unfair business practices in violation of state consumer protection law, breach of contract, violation of common-law privacy rights, and other claims.' 'Google's interest in medical records derived from its plans to develop a novel EHR system.'

Quote:

'EHRs are highly penetrant and often interlinked; search engines track user activity on nearly 2 billion websites, many of which collect additional information; smartphones permit detailed geolocation tracking; and an entire industry of data aggregators pools and packages consumer information for analysis and resale. The substantial increase in available personal information and advances in computing mean that individuals can often be identified in deidentified data by triangulating data sources. The Dinerstein v Google complaint recounts in detail how Google could, in theory, combine patients' geolocation and other smartphone data with dates and times in the EHR to determine who visited which clinical departments when, which services they received, and what notes their physicians wrote about them. Once an individual's identity is ascertained, the company could then link EHR data with other types of information about that person (eg, what they purchase).'

An opinion piece in the current JAMA https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2748399