Personal health data is by its nature highly sensitive and its vulnerability in a digital environment has already been underlined by recent ransomware attacks that have affected NHS trusts. Andrew Duncan, the director of foundational AI at the UK's Alan Turing Institute, says even anonymised health data can be manipulated to identify a patient through a process known as "re-identification" whereby "de-identified" data can be matched to other available information to identify someone. "Once you start to narrow things down you can start to re-identify people easily," he says. Duncan adds that AI models can be trained in a way that prevents re-identification, although "the caveat is that all of this has to be done very carefully". MedConfidential, which campaigns for confidentiality in healthcare, also wants clarity on whether a health dataset will respect patients who have signed an opt-out that prevents their data being used for research and planning in England.

Google will receive five years' worth of NHS patients' sensitive records under the terms of a deal signed last month, despite controversy over similar contracts in the past. The extent to which patient data has been shared between an NHS trust in England and AI company DeepMind was first revealed by New Scientist in 2016 and later ruled that it failed to comply with the law by the data watchdog for failures over informing patients.

Google looks to be getting a firmer hold on NHS patient data by absorbing its DeepMind Health AI lab - a leading UK health technology developer. The news has raised concerns about the privacy of NHS patient's data which is used by DeepMind and could now be commercialised by Google. DeepMind was bought by Google's parent company Alphabet for £400 million ($520m) in 2014 and up until now has maintained independence. Now the London-based lab will be sharing operations with the US-based Google Health unit. It was created after Google bought University College London spinout, DeepMind, for £400 million in 2014.

Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) subsidiary Google's artificial intelligence company DeepMind Health has signed an agreement with a hospital that is part of the U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS) network to deploy Streams, an app that monitors critical indicators of a patient's health and alerts doctors. This is the second such deal signed by DeepMind this year. Earlier, the company signed a similar agreement for patient data with three hospitals that operate under the NHS umbrella. As part of the agreements, DeepMind receives access to important patient data and medical histories. News reports have alleged that DeepMind obtained the data without explicit consent from the affected patients.

It's no secret that Google has broad ambitions in healthcare. But a document obtained by New Scientist reveals that the tech giant's collaboration with the UK's National Health Service goes far beyond what has been publicly announced. The document – a data-sharing agreement between Google-owned artificial intelligence company DeepMind and the Royal Free NHS Trust – gives the clearest picture yet of what the company is doing and what sensitive data it now has access to. The agreement gives DeepMind access to a wide range of healthcare data on the 1.6 million patients who pass through three London hospitals run by the Royal Free NHS Trust – Barnet, Chase Farm and the Royal Free – each year. This will include information about people who are HIV-positive, for instance, as well as details of drug overdoses and abortions.

It's no secret that Google has broad ambitions in healthcare. But a document obtained by New Scientist reveals that the tech giant's collaboration with the UK's National Health Service goes far beyond what has been publicly announced. The document – a data-sharing agreement between Google-owned artificial intelligence company DeepMind and the Royal Free NHS Trust – gives the clearest picture yet of what the company is doing and what sensitive data it now has access to. The agreement gives DeepMind access to a wide range of healthcare data on the 1.6 million patients who pass through three London hospitals run by the Royal Free NHS Trust – Barnet, Chase Farm and the Royal Free – each year. This will include information about people who are HIV-positive, for instance, as well as details of drug overdoses and abortions. The agreement also includes access to patient data from the last five years.