Facebook sent doctors to top hospitals to share patient data

themarkymark (81)in #news • 7 years ago

_Source

Facebook hired doctors to visit top hospitals to with a proposal to share patient data in exchange for matching up data they collected to "help" hospitals find out what patients might need special treatment.

The project never made it far due to the publicity the Cambridge Analytica data leak created. As a result, many people are deleting their Facebook accounts or being more careful what data they share.

"This work has not progressed past the planning phase, and we have not received, shared, or analyzed anyone's data," a Facebook spokesperson

Data would be anonymous

Facebook claims they would collect the data anonymously and all personal information would be obscured in both directions. Information like name, social security number, and home address would be left out of the data transfer. You can be damn sure Facebook will attempt to link that data on their end, and there have been many studies in the past specifically related to de-anonymizing large data sets. With the amount of data Facebook has, it would have an easier time than most.

"The medical industry has long understood that there are general health benefits to having a close-knit circle of family and friends. But deeper research into this link is needed to help medical professionals develop specific treatment and intervention plans that take social connection into account."

"With this in mind, last year Facebook began discussions with leading medical institutions, including the American College of Cardiology and the Stanford University School of Medicine, to explore whether scientific research using anonymized Facebook data could help the medical community advance our understanding in this area. This work has not progressed past the planning phase, and we have not received, shared, or analyzed anyone's data."

"Last month we decided that we should pause these discussions so we can focus on other important work, including doing a better job of protecting people's data and being clearer with them about how that data is used in our products and services."
_{Facebook response to media inquiries}

Not the first time

Although we can all agree that Facebook sucks, this isn't the first attempt to link patient records. Google has been trying to get medical records in the cloud for a while now with who knows what sort of integration with their other services.

In the past, Google attempted a "Google Health" program where users can volunteer health records to their cloud service but was discontinued in 2011.

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