HCA Healthcare, the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain, which operates 185 hospitals and more than 2,000 care sites across 20 states, announced a landmark deal with search giant Google this week, aimed at extracting and analyzing data from more than 32M annual patient encounters.

The multiyear partnership will involve data scientists from both companies working together to develop care algorithms and clinical alerts to improve outcomes and efficiency. Data from HCA’s electronic health records will be integrated with Google’s cloud computing service, and the companies have pledged to adhere to strict limitations to protect individual patient privacy—a key concern raised by regulators after Google announced a similar partnership with another national health system, Ascension, at the end of 2019.

Despite those assurances, some experts pointed to this week’s announcement as further evidence that existing privacy protections are insufficient in the face of the deepening relationships between tech companies, like Google and Microsoft, and healthcare providers, who manage the sensitive health information of millions of patients.
 
We’d agree—we’re overdue for a major rethink of how patient privacy is handled. The healthcare industry spent much of the last decade “wiring” the health system, converting from paper records to electronic ones, and building vast storehouses of clinical data along the way. We’ve now reached a new phase, and the primary task ahead is to harness all of that data to actually improve care. That will require extensive data sharing, such as a recently announced initiative among several major health systems, and will also entail tapping the expertise of “big data” companies from beyond healthcare—the very same companies whose business practices have sometimes raised privacy concerns in the broader social context. But health information is different—more personal and more sensitive—than data about shopping preferences and viewing habits, requiring more rigorous regulation. 

As more big data deals are inked in healthcare, the question of patient privacy will become increasingly pressing.