On Friday, Google defeated a 1.6 million people’s lawsuit over medical records provided by a British hospital trust.
The Royal Free London NHS Trust gave patient data to Google’s DeepMind Technologies in 2015 to develop a smartphone app that analyzes medical information and detects acute kidney damage.
In 2017, the Information Commissioner’s Office found that the NHS’s Royal Free mishandled patient data by giving it to DeepMind.
Last year, Royal Free patient Andrew Prismall sued Google and DeepMind on behalf of 1.6 million people for data exploitation.
In March, the firms said the action was “bound to fail” since it was impossible to prove that all 1.6 million claimants’ private information was misused or that they had any expectation of privacy.
On Friday, Judge Heather Williams declared the lawsuit “bound to fail” and dismissed it.
“I conclude that each member of the claimant class does not have a realistic prospect of establishing a reasonable expectation of privacy in respect of their relevant medical records,” she wrote.
