10 | New Scientist | 5 October 2019Analysis Medical dataTHIS month, hospitals in the
National Health Service in England
signed their first deals with
Google. Five NHS trusts have
agreed contracts with Google
Health, after it swallowed up its
UK sister firm DeepMind Health,
nearly a year after signalling its
intention to do so.
New Scientist first revealed
the extent of DeepMind’s access
to the sensitive data of more
than a million NHS patients in
2016, in a deal that the UK’s
data watchdog later found
breached the law. The partnership
has yielded interesting research,
including using artificial
intelligence to detect eye disease
from scans with an accuracy
that matches or exceeds
human experts.
But is there a material difference
now the deals are with the US tech
giant rather than DeepMind, and
should people who use the NHS
be concerned at the change?
Five trusts, including the Royal
Free London and Moorfields Eye
Hospital, have transferred their
contracts over to Google Health.
Taunton and Somerset NHS trust
is among them, but will not use
the company’s Streams app,
which helps keep track of patients’
test results. Another NHS trust,
Yeovil District Hospital, choseinstead to end its contract, saying
it didn’t find the app necessary.
We don’t know exactly what
data sharing is occurring with
Google Health, but the Royal Free’s
old deal with DeepMind included
anonymised data such as medical
history, diagnoses, treatment
dates, ethnic origin and religion.“Transparency is paramount,”
says Phil Booth at campaign
group MedConfidential.
DeepMind took the unusual
step of publishing its contracts, but
Google Health has not. It says the
public can access the documents
by asking individual NHS trusts.
“There are very minimal
changes to the contracts as they
moved over,” says Dominic King
of Google Health. The updates
that were made were in response
to new European Union data
protection laws, he says.
David Maguire at The King’s
Fund think tank questions
the decision. “It creates an
unnecessary uncertainty, which
isn’t great for assuaging people’s
fears. There’s a legitimate thing
about people feeling nervousabout how their data is used,”
he says.
One change is that the data is no
longer being stored by a third party
contracted by Google. It is now
on Google’s cloud infrastructure,
which NHS guidelines allow for,
stored on servers in the UK and
backed up elsewhere in the EU.
Another shift is the abolition of
the independent ethics panel that
DeepMind established, but that
Google Health says doesn’t fit
with its international scope. Booth
says that although the panel was a
“damp squib”, it provided a “level of
reassurance”. King says the firm is
heavily scrutinised by its executive
board, its partners and regulators.
While patients can opt out
of their data being shared with
Google, under the NHS’s national
data opt-out, hospitals don’t have
to be compliant with the opt-out
until next year.
Some people also have concerns
over potential cultural changes
during the switchover to Google
Health. “Previously, the DeepMind
Health leadership involved in the
actual work in London were well
known on the internet scene in
the UK as being very ethically
minded,” says Tom Loosemore
of consultancy Public Digital.
“They have now left because
of Google Health taking over.”
However, King says: “The
same team that I led in DeepMind
Health is the same team that will
be working with our partners
going forward.”
Whether patients at the five
NHS trusts should be worried is
hard to say. “The problem is: how
can I know?” says Loosemore.
“Would I personally trust Google?
No I damn well wouldn’t, I’d want
that transparency.” ❚BR
IANANTHONY/ALA
MYSTOCK^ PHOTONews
The Royal Free London
is one of five trusts to
transfer its contract“DeepMind took the
step of publishing its
contracts, but Google
Health has not”UK hospitals strike deals with Google Five NHS trusts have
moved contracts with DeepMind to Google. But there’s a lack
of transparency about what’s changed, finds Adam VaughanMaterial scienceSam WongA FLUID that suppresses flames
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