Google caught misusing patient data 3 more times

People are starting to openly question and outright investigate Google’s viability in healthcare tech.

It’s been a very bad week. On Wednesday, we talked about the blockbuster revelation that a Google pact with Ascension Health violates HIPAA. And comments from two Federal regulators that do not bode well for Big Tech’s prospects in this new market.

Turns out the Ascension debacle isn’t even the first time this year Google’s been caught being naughty with sensitive patient data. Google and the University of Chicago were sued back in June over sharing data with identifiable patient information.

And shortly after the WSJ story broke, the Financial Times published its own blockbuster: Google and the rest of Big Tech have been harvesting sensitive patient data from health Web sites.

Then the Washington Post revealed that Google almost made 100,000 chest X-rays public.

And to top the week off, the Google employee who blew the whistle on the Ascension work came forward with some shocking allegations.

(Update 11/25: U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy & Commerce Committee Leaders Demand “Answers From Ascension and Google” on Health Data-Sharing Arrangement)

To be sure, it’s not just Google. Fully 1/3 of healthcare databases that store data locally and in the cloud are currently exposing sensitive patient data, according to researchers at IntSights.

But Google is definitely emerging as a premeditated bad actor.