Security News > 2020 > March > Senators Demand More Info on Google's 'Project Nightingale'

Three U.S. senators are demanding more answers from Catholic health system Ascension and Google over "Project Nightingale," which is part of a controversial data-sharing and cloud migration initiative that has raised concerns about sharing patient information without explicit permission.

In a letter sent Monday to St. Louis-based Ascension, Sen. Bill Cassidy, M.D., R-La., and Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut are demanding additional answers, including a complete list of patient-level information that Google received from Ascension and the exact number of health records that the company collected in Project Nightingale.

"It is critical that lawmakers receive comprehensive information about Project Nightingale, which serves as a case study of Google's more extensive foray into electronic health records," the senators write in their letter.

Under the agreement, Ascension is migrating its on-premises data warehouse and analytics infrastructure to a Google cloud environment, using Google G productivity tools for Ascension employees to communicate and collaborate in real time, and implementing Google's artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to support improvements in clinical quality and patient safety.

Feinberg notes that only a limited number of Google employees have access to patient data: "Only a limited group of Google employees has access to customer data. Further, Google employees' access rights and levels are based on their job function and role, using the concepts of least-privilege and need-to-know to match access privileges to defined responsibilities."

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https://www.inforisktoday.com/senators-demand-more-info-on-googles-project-nightingale-a-13874