US to probe Google deal to manage healthcare data

The Office for Civil Rights of the US Department of Health and Human Services has opened an inquiry into a partnership between Google and one of the country’s largest non-profit Catholic health systems, in which the corporate giant is handling patients’ medical data without their knowledge or consent.

The government stepped in after media reports questioned whether a company that collects data to target advertising should be handling personal medical records, as Google employees do under the terms of Project Nightingale, a collaboration with Ascension, which operates 151 hospitals and more than 2000 clinics in 21 states. The Office for …