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Caldicott's concerns: DeepMind and the Royal Free London - a summary from Mischon de Reya. "The latest medical data sharing

Caldicott's concerns: DeepMind and the Royal Free London - a summary from Mischon de Reya.

"The latest medical data sharing controversy to attract the interest of regulators and the press involves the Royal Free London ('RF'), one of London's biggest hospitals, and its arrangements with DeepMind, involving the transfer of 1.6 million identifiable patient records, without explicit patient consent, as part of the development and testing of an application relating to acute kidney injury."

In trying to asserts its rights over the data the Royal Free did not make the privacy issues sufficiently clear. There seems to have been confusion over who actually was the data controller.

In my (simplistic) view patients share their data with the NHS (I assume) for the own personal direct benefit for their care. If that data was to be used for the benefit of others then it would either require (1) patient consent, (2) the permission of NHS governance (for reasonable use elsewhere in same hospital or perhaps the NHS) or (3) an ethics committee (to agree that the benefits to society would be such that individuals consent may not be necessary - the privacy would still have to be sorted of course).

I can't see patients being happy with the fact their private data would be shared with a company that could generate a product (or research) for profit unless they had given their express permission. Some AI visionaries would differ I'm sure saying that you need huge corporate pockets to be able to develop these tools. I disagree - let's reshape our relationship with corporations so that the benefits of those deep pockets are felt by all of society. If the pockets are shallower and shared with public organisations such as the NHS then so be it.



Source: www.mishcon.com

pockets data consent london nhs royal permission free