Is Google Facing a Backlash From Medical Record Vendors? (cnbc.com) 12
Two months ago the Washington Post reported that Google "has partnered with health-care provider Ascension to collect and store personal data for millions of patients, including full names, dates of birth and clinical histories, in order to make smarter recommendations to physicians."
Now CNBC reports that the medical record vendor Epic Systems "has been phoning customers to tell them it will not pursue further integration with Google Cloud. The company is instead focusing on Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, citing insufficient interest from customers in Google.
"The move comes as Google is facing criticism from privacy advocates about its work with Ascension, one of the largest U.S. health systems," CNBC adds. But could this start influencing which cloud provider hospitals choose for their records?
"We've historically seen hospital systems make these decisions independently of their medical record provider," said Aneesh Chopra, the president of health-technology company CareJourney and the former chief technology officer of the United States. "It will be interesting to see if Epic's thumb on the scale moves cloud market share...."
Epic isn't alone in its move.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Cerner decided against pursuing a data-storage relationship with Google despite being offered tens of millions of dollars in incentives. The company was on the hunt for a cloud vendor to help it store 250 million patient medical records. In the end, Cerner went with Amazon.
In 2017 CNBC reported Cerner's collaboration with Amazon would initially focus on a "popular health product...which enables hospitals to gather and analyze huge volumes of clinical data to improve patients' health outcomes and lower treatment costs."
Now CNBC reports that the medical record vendor Epic Systems "has been phoning customers to tell them it will not pursue further integration with Google Cloud. The company is instead focusing on Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, citing insufficient interest from customers in Google.
"The move comes as Google is facing criticism from privacy advocates about its work with Ascension, one of the largest U.S. health systems," CNBC adds. But could this start influencing which cloud provider hospitals choose for their records?
"We've historically seen hospital systems make these decisions independently of their medical record provider," said Aneesh Chopra, the president of health-technology company CareJourney and the former chief technology officer of the United States. "It will be interesting to see if Epic's thumb on the scale moves cloud market share...."
Epic isn't alone in its move.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Cerner decided against pursuing a data-storage relationship with Google despite being offered tens of millions of dollars in incentives. The company was on the hunt for a cloud vendor to help it store 250 million patient medical records. In the end, Cerner went with Amazon.
In 2017 CNBC reported Cerner's collaboration with Amazon would initially focus on a "popular health product...which enables hospitals to gather and analyze huge volumes of clinical data to improve patients' health outcomes and lower treatment costs."
AWS v MS v GOOG privacy (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think it's about virtual machines it's more like marking or some kind of record search system.
... instead focusing on AWS and Azure ... (Score:2)
I think the problem started with... (Score:4, Insightful)
Privacy disaster (Score:3)
I have not read the article since it has been pay-walled.
Personal data, especially with including personally identifiable information of patients, to the biggest data miner in the world, with a demonstrated profit motive to undermine privacy, has to be illegal, even under existing privacy laws, would or should be inexcusable, regardless of whichever legalese spin the lawyers come up with.
I would understand if a collection of pre-processed clinical terminology codes from properly de-identified records was passed to a neural network, running on the cloud for predictive modeling; but sending raw records, with names and DOB?
I am not a fan of Epic, they are the microsoft-esque big gorilla in the clinical record world, I would not phrase this as "Epic's thumb on the scale". This is resisting "Google's thumb", which any EHR vendor should.
Why on earth would you send names? They have no clinical predictive value. Send the birth year at most, perhaps even with a fuzzy factor, but why would you give out the full DOB, with the name, making it fully identifiable, to the biggest pan-opticon after NSA data centers. That's just selling private data, even if it is just for discounts for processing, the same Google, Facebook trap that individuals have fallen to.
I understand that Google has top AI talent. I get that we want to apply this talent to improve healthcare. But please don't hand them de-identified data.
Re:Privacy disaster (Google don't get it) (Score:2)
I wish I had a favorable mod point for you.
My primary specific response to your comment is a secondary issue, the question of whether the identity can actually be removed from any individual data. If the data contains any significant attributes at the granularity of individuals, then recovering the identity is a fairly well understood problem. I'm not saying that it's trivial, but if you have enough related data to correlate with, then it's going to be possible and it's almost surely going to happen.
My new
Re: (Score:2)
I understand.
> the question of whether the identity can actually be removed from any individual data.
De-identification is an ever-debated and studied issue in clinical research. There is a bunch of research on the area. Yes, it is tricky. I generally trust clinical researchers to care for patient privacy than any data mining company. I am not sure what protocols Google followed, but at least basing on the summary, they do not seem to have, while leaving the caveat that it might be a bad summary.
> goog
Re: (Score:2)
It has to be identified because you can track genetics better that way, as in relatives and their reactions. What it really means is a medical data corporation, should only do medical records and analysis and nothing else and be secured and audited by government regulation. It should not be contracted out, with records and data analysis scattered, where it should happen of course is within the government organisation that controls Medicare.
Lol. Like Amazon is going to be any better. (Score:1)
Amazon Ring... so much better morals than Google!
Sorry, I know this is very unpopular among /.ers from the 2010s, but if you use "the cloud", you're a retard. No exceptions.
Just like fixie bikes, SUVs, wireless headphones bike computers, etc, trusting takling head hearsay like "the news", or voting "Democrats" or "Republicans".
My privacy belongs to me, not you (Score:2)
Why do so many people care about my privacy?
take the profit out of healthcare + no pre ex ever (Score:2)
take the profit out of healthcare + no pre ex ever.
gather and analyze huge volumes of clinical data is nice but not with the talk of pre existing conditions as just about anything can be an pre existing condition even. Something event stuff like Rape and Domestic Violence as been used as one.