Google and the massive Ascension health system have been secretly working together on a project to store and analyze millions of patient medical records.
Ascension is transferring the personal and medical information of 50 million Ascension patients onto Google's cloud network. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the project Monday.
In return, Google gains access to the data, a source with knowledge of the matter told Business Insider. The source asked not to be identified because the information isn't public.
The partnership titled "Project Nightingale" involves Google helping Ascension move its data onto Google's Cloud services and adding collaboration and G-Suite tools followed by plans to build an electronic search tool for patient records, according to internal documents reviewed by Business Insider.
The project is controversial, as patients weren't notified that their health information would be made available to Google, the person said. Both Google and Ascension said the program followed US health privacy laws.
The US Department of Health and Human Services has opened an investigation into the partnership, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. Roger Severino, director of the department's Office for Civil Rights, told The Journal the probe will look into ensuring federal laws that protect the privacy of patients' health information were fully implemented.
Meanwhile, US Senators Amy Klobuchar and Lisa Murkowski said they were concerned about whether the organizations were taking proper steps to protect patient privacy.
Google's Tariq Shaukat said the partnership is "a business arrangement to help a provider with the latest technology, similar to the work we do with dozens of other healthcare providers."
"These organizations, like Ascension, use Google to securely manage their patient data, under strict privacy and security standards," added Shaukat, who's president of industry products and solutions at Google Cloud.
Ascension is the second-largest health system in the US, spanning 21 states and 150 hospitals. In the year that ended June 30, it brought in about $25 billion in revenue.
The partnership between Ascension and Google began late last year and ramped up this past summer and fall, according to the documents.
As of this month, about 20 million patients' information has been uploaded to Google's Cloud services, with the remaining 30 million to be completed by February, the source said.
About 2,000 out of the roughly 40,000 doctors and nurses in Ascension's hospital network were aware of the partnership, as they had been asked to test the electronic search system, the source added.
Google's Mountain View, California, headquarters. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
The project involves employees from different segments of Google and Ascension. Close to 150 Google employees from different organizations are able to access the data, internal documents show. Among those are employees from the Google Health, research, and Cloud teams.
The data collected in the Google-Ascension partnership contains name, contact information, diagnoses, and medication orders, according to internal documents. The Ascension data that Google employees have access to includes patients' names and other personal information, according to the documents.
Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the law, known as HIPAA, that is meant to protect the privacy of patients' health information, health systems can share patient information with business partners.
That includes everything from the software companies providing the electronic health records to billing vendors. Patients are typically asked when they join a health system to sign papers acknowledging a health system's privacy practices covering the third parties the information would be shared with, Roger Cohen, a lawyer in Goodwin Partner's life-sciences practice, told Business Insider.
"What's different is it's Google," Cohen said.
When it comes to big tech players rather than traditional health IT companies, there are broader public perceptions about how the data will be used, he said. "It goes to in this area where you have to think not just about the law but public perception as well."
Ascension said in a release Monday that "all work related to Ascension's engagement with Google is HIPAA compliant and underpinned by a robust data security and protection effort and adherence to Ascension's strict requirements for data handling."
As part of the business associates agreement, Google employees do have access to identified patient data, a Google representative clarified. Ascension employees have raised concerns about how Google might use its access to patients' personal data on the electronic system, the source told Business Insider.
Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Lisa Murkowski, who have introduced legislation to protect patients' health data, have expressed concern over the partnership.
Klobuchar, who is running to win the Democratic Party's 2020 presidential nomination, said in a Tuesday statement that the Google-Ascension partnership "isn't the only one that raises serious privacy concerns," citing Google's recent acquisition of health-tracking device company FitBit. Murkowski added that protecting patients' privacy is "a high priority of mine."
At the core of the project is a patient search tool. According to a user guide for testers of the tool that was provided by a source, users can type in patient names to find matches, get an overview of a patient's information, view notes and lab reports, and get a view of patient results over time. The information in the user guide does not contain Ascension patient information, the document noted.
Here's what it looks like:
User manual
The search gives users the ability to search through patients within Ascension, pulling up an overview of their health record with the ability to get a closer look at vitals or labs. Patient Search user manual
Much like Google Search, the forms are meant to correct for what medical providers are searching for.
Patient Search user manual
The reports can also provide a view of a patient's lab results over time.
Patient Search user manual
Over the past year, Google has gotten deeper into healthcare,hiring Dr. David Feinbergto head up the Google Health division.
Feinberg's team is now responsible for coordinating health initiatives across Google, ranging from the company's search engine and map products, to its Android smartphone operating system, to more futuristic offerings in areas like artificial intelligence.
In hisspeech at a conference in October, Feinberg said one of his first main goals for the team would be to oversee how health-related web searches came up and to work to improve that with the Google Search team.
Healthcarecosts are rising for consumers, andnumerous players want control over the dollars flowing in and out. From the perspective of the fast-moving technology industry, change is slow going, leaving entrepreneurs and companies alike thinking, "There has to be an easier way."
Tech powerhouses like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are increasingly focused on expanding in US healthcare. They've pursued strategies like selling software and computing services and offering hardware and have even shown some signs they'll get into the business of providing healthcare.
And as health systems have been amassing more information, there's an emerging race to see which company might benefit from storing that data on their respective clouds and what other platforms or tools might sway healthcare companies to work with them.
According to Business Insider Intelligence, healthcare companies were projected to spend $11.4 billion on cloud computing this year. Amazon as of 2017 had about 46% of the cloud infrastructure market, while Microsoft had about 11%.
Amazon and Google have been landing major deals as well. In July,the health information technology giant Cernersaid it had made Amazon Web Services its preferred cloud provider as it moved its business from being hosted on its own data centers to the cloud. The Minnesota-basedMayo Clinic in September signed Google as its cloud and artificial-intelligence partner.
This story was published on November 11 and has been updated with comments from US Senators Lisa Murkowski and Amy Klobuchar.
Excerpt from:
Inside Google and Ascension cloud and AI partnership: details - Business Insider