NHS Gives Amazon Free Use of Health Data Under Alexa Advice Deal (theguardian.com) 25
Amazon has been given free access to healthcare information collected by the NHS as part of a contract with the government. The material, which excludes patient data, could allow the multinational technology company to make, advertise and sell its own products. From a report: In July the health secretary, Matt Hancock, said a partnership with the NHS that allowed Amazon Alexa devices to offer expert health advice to users would reduce pressure on "our hard-working GPs and pharmacists." But responses to freedom of information requests, published by the Sunday Times, showed the contract will also allow the company access to information on symptoms, causes and definitions of conditions, and "all related copyrightable content and data and other materials." Amazon, which is worth $863bn and is run by the world's richest person, Jeff Bezos, can then create "new products, applications, cloud-based services and/or distributed software," which the NHS would not benefit from financially. It can also share the information with third parties. Labour's shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, told the Sunday Times that the government was "highly irresponsible" and "in the pocket of big corporate interests."
Will be fun... (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder how many responding to this will fail to read the article and believe the sensationalist, intentionally misleading summary?
This is basically the NHS letting Amazon access the _non patient_ data it has that would allow Amazon to help UK citizens get better health advice from Alexa.
In fact, most (all?) of this data is already available and should be anyway if it's non-patient data that would let doctors or other systems better diagnose medical issues. Information wants to be free, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed.
I guess the alternative would be to have Alexis just throw a dart:
Hey Alexis: my head hurts, I'm not running a temperature, my stomach is slightly upset and I'm tired, what is wrong, should I go to the doctor ?
Alexis: Hmm, it sounds like you've broken your left femur.
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Monetize (Score:2)
It could be worse. If it hooks in to WebMD it will just tell you that you have cancer [forlackofa...rcomic.com].
Would you like to subscribe to Amazon Prime health for a non-fatal diagnosis?"
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Doctors within the NHS already get access to systems such as OpenAthens, BNF and a lot of other things for free, which already contain this information, so really this is about lowering the load on primary care (GPs, ER) for minor ailments where the "patient" can visit a pharmacy for over-the-counter or buy off-the-shelf treatments instead.
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Information doesn't have any wants. Stewart Brand is not The Oracle.
However, if you do ascribe to his philosophy, giving it to Bezos to put inside a walled garden hardly fits.
Also the idea that this takes work away from pharmacists is just plainly idiotic, it's not like you can self diagnose with Alexa and have Amazon ship you listed pharmaceuticals. It /might/ keep a few idiots out of ERs but in all likelihood would be more likely to see a few more dead people that should have gone to a doctor because they
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This isn't about redirecting work away from pharmacists, its about redirecting work *to* them - redirecting patients has long been a thing and the NHS has several programs in place to divert patients from presenting at primary care and instead to present at a pharmacy for minor ailments, this is just another tool in the box.
This isn't going to be about getting a perfect diagnosis from Alexa and then ordering the treatment from Amazon, this is going to be getting a general diagnosis and a recommendation as t
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Sure, so stomach ache and a fever?
Half way down page 2 of the Google search results you get pancreatitis, which will kill you if you treat for stomach flu.
The first article doesn't even put it in the top 12 likely candidates, and if you think pharmacists are diagnosing it you're too damn funny.
Plus, from the article:
In July the health secretary, Matt Hancock, said a partnership with the NHS that allowed Amazon Alexa devices to offer expert health advice to users would reduce pressure on “our hard-working GPs and pharmacists”.
Sure, he's an idiot, but he's the idiot that gets to OK this attempt to reduce spending on healthcare instead of increasing it.
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Do you know how many patients present to a GP with symptoms that can both represent benign ailments and major life threatening illnesses? Tens of thousands every single day. Do you know how many of those turn out to be the benign ailment rather than the life threatening illness? Almost all of them. Do you know how many of those with the actual life threatening illness are diagnosed on first presentation? Almost none.
You are taking the worst case scenario and trying to make it the norm.
If this reduces t
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So it would just be my wife that would be dead then, I guess that's just the sacrifice you require since none of what you said would be true in her case; gallstones => acute pancreatitis with lipase off the chart => laparoscopic cholecystectomy; saw the GP in the morning, admitted in the afternoon.
Besides, how do you know it's allowing the serious cases (that apparently excludes everyone with acute pancreatitis) access if they're being diagnosed as having the clearly far more common minor ailment by A
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"healthcare data" (Score:1)
So not patient information, individually or in aggregate.
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Good thing there's no central healthcare in USA (Score:2)
Good thing there's no single-payer or centralized health care in America, AMIRIGHT?
>> I wonder how many will fail to read the article
Please count me among them: TFA's are for chumps. Straight to the comments like a good Slashdotter!
Preferential Treatment (Score:2)
Why does Amazon get preferential treatment?
I thought that the NHS was public, and therefore required to deal equally with for-profit organizations.
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Thats for the UK gov to sell, gov away, set limits on, protect with privacy laws...
All part of accepting and using "free" gov care... for decades and generations.
Some UK experts feel a US brand can do some good with vast amounts of UK health data?
The gov can sell/give/grant/show/offer time... with vast amounts of data.
Wait for the result of big US data to work on the data.
Something amazing might drop out
Bullshit (Score:3)
The article is in the Guardian a left-leaning newspaper. The UK has a General Election next week in a straight battle between the Conservatives and Labour. Labour are constantly saying that the NHS will be sold off to US companies - the Conservatives say that's all lies.
So what we have is an article in a left newspaper designed to bolster support for the Labour Party just before a General Election.
If you read the article there is absolutely nothing in it that is remarkable, illegal or in anyway effects confidentiality. The whole jist is that because it's Amazon who are a huge US company with a history of Tax avoidance, it's terrible.
Quelle Surprise
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You will note (from the summary) that it was in fact a right wing newspaper, The Times, which made these FOI requests that revealed what was happening. Strange that the government resisted releasing the information if it is benign or even helpful.
So the issue here, which TFA makes clear, is that Amazon is an extremely profitable company which dodges vast amounts of UK tax. Here the UK government has a valuable resource that Amazon wants access to, but instead of charging for it the government gave it away f
Maybe the could have had a Union Jack (Score:2)
Maybe the could have had a Union Jack icon in the summary.