Further to our blog post last week, Google is now being investigated by the data protection watchdog: the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) over it’s data deal between the Royal Free Hospital Trust and DeepMind.

The investigation results from ‘at least’ one complaint received over the anonymising of data. While the Hospital Trust declare that all data is anonymised in transit and with Deepmind, the data sharing contract actually states:

‘As this data is being held for direct patient care purposes, pseudonymisation is not required.’

I look forward to the report from the ICO.

Royal Free contract here

Report in Computer weekly and in New Scientist