While one could make an argument for walking speed or distress (loneliness) as the 6th vital sign, it's really data.
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| Data As The 6th Vital Sing in |
BigTech companies are playing dirty to get their hands on our healthcare data. Whether its DeepMind’s historic handling of sensitive NHS data or now Project Nightingale, Google understands how valuable that data will be and is pulling out all the stops to get its hands on it.
While Apple and Amazon pivot into healthcare will be considerable, it's Google's data-hungry approach that can lead to breakthroughs and stealth in how surveillance capitalism scales from the inside.
Android Central looked at the Fitbit acquisition of Google and it shows consumers have a profound mistrust of what Google does with our data. In mid-November, 2019 another story broke of how Google secretly gathered millions of patient records across 21 states on behalf of a health care provider, in an effort dubbed “Project Nightingale,” reported The Wall Street Journal.
Data is the 6th Vital Sign
Google's newly created Google Health division is pulling out all the stops and it could hurt the future of consumer and patient privacy in the next machine learning dominated era of healthcare.
Google wants to do good so badly, the way it's trying to get there appears somewhat sociopathic. For sure, Artificial intelligence, including machine learning, presents exciting opportunities to transform the health and life sciences spaces and alters the biotech future of the planet.
AI and healthcare are seemingly made for each other, and it's all about the data. Google is also focusing its efforts on Google’s core expertise in search, looking to make it easier for doctors to search medical records, and to improve the quality of health-related search results for consumers across Google, according to CNBC.
Google's secretive deal with Ascension is part of a push to use artificial intelligence to aid health services. The problem is the lack of patient consent. Google has confirmed that it partnered with health heavyweight Ascension, a Catholic health care system based in St. Louis that operates across 21 states and the District of Columbia.
DeepMind Health already had access to incredible amounts of data, as even while being legally above board Google's strategy to get access to more and more data looks very dangerous for how surveillance capitalism will scale into the healthcare field. Google will use the data in its own way, and the profitization of our healthcare data has in 2019 begun.
Alphabet will become a healthcare-focused technology company the likes of which we've never seen before. AI will monitor a range of biometrics such as heart rate, blood pressure, temperature and glucose levels, in addition to environmental factors such as exposure to pathogens and toxins, and behavioral factors like sleep and activity patterns. This biometric, genetic, environmental and behavioral information could be coupled with social data and used to create AI models, according to Time Magazine.
AI can predict when we die and in terms of medical diagnosis, Google is making significant breakthroughs. Google will be able to provide machine learning to make hospitals and patient-centric care more efficient and save $billions of dollars. The price is our healthcare data. The price is an AI that knows more and more about us. Google is ushering in a world where privacy no longer exists.
Until recently, neither patients nor physicians knew that "at least 150 Google employees already have access to much of the data on tens of millions of patients" across 21 states. Google is doing this all under the table, in a race for our most private data, which it will use as the 6th vital sign to invent a whole new area of healthcare. A healthcare system optimized by machine intelligence.
With these revelations, we have to consider Google the early leader while we know Tech giants like Amazon and Apple too are expanding their businesses to include electronic health records -- which contain data on diagnoses, prescriptions, and other medical information. Amazon in the Cloud is likely to dominate the future of the EMR space. While Apple dominates in the wearables field.
Google has dabbled in health care for years, lured by the size of the opportunity. Health care represents a $3.5 trillion market, which still relies on a lot of manual processes. It's widely believed Google will provide AI-tools for physicians, clinicians and healthcare administrators that will change healthcare forever. Google's expensive DeepMind division is the most talented group of AI experts ever assembled and monetizing healthcare should be one of their primary goals.
Forbes reports that as a part of Project Nightingale, Ascension uploaded patient data to Google’s Cloud servers. The idea was that by using the system, Ascension health providers could use a tool called Patient Search to pull up individual patient pages, according to the Verge. This means new kinds of databases are coming into being about us and our healthcare histories. Our healthcare data is no longer going to be our own.
GAFMA companies are already technology giants, but with healthcare data in the Cloud they becometechnological nation-states. Microsoft is part of this group as well. Microsoft has introduced cloud-based tools to help health systems share medical data. While leading AI in the healthcare field, BigTech companies that are already too powerful, will become even more powerful and rich.
If data is the 6th vital sign, BigTech is racing to dominate our life. It's AI will impact our longevity and our well-being. AI's emergence into healthcare provides it with the ultimate narrative that AI in our lives is good for us. Data is the starting point for AI and healthcare is a data-rich and lucrative domain for these companies. So we will be given little choice to fulfill the (greed) need to invest in the creation and collection of data–while ensuring that the value created through the use of this data accrues to the individuals whose data it is.
Google is pioneering “AI assistant for nurses and doctors.” Google is also the leader in how deep learning can predict and diagnose health conditions before traditional tests while giving a probability of our outcomes in a medical setting based on our condition, medical chart, past history, family history, and genetic data. GAFMA companies will make $ Billions in healthcare, and our data as patients and individuals are at risk.
We need to make sure that our computer scientists, data scientists, medical professionals, legal professionals, and policymakers have relevant training on the unique capabilities of AI and an understanding of the risks. Though as a futurist, I doubt very much as a society we'll follow them. Google has shown an ethical disregard of issues and risks for projects that have a high potential for profit and monetization.
If AI can predict when we die, we don't even know how it does it fully. Google in the process of crunching all of this medical data will be able to make breakthroughs that are impossible today in 2019, but there this will also create more sophisticated deep learning tools and capabilities that could have risks and dangers we do not yet understand. BigTech is not being regulated adequately.
Publications like Forbes blanket us with articles about how AI will improve healthcare, but few talk about the risks of what letting surveillance capitalism into our homes and bodies will ultimately mean. If Google has its way with our data, what do we become? How do we give our consent when healthcare will become machine learning automated? What if the 6th vital sign had unique dangers nobody wants to talk about?
Google had partnered with the University of Chicago Medical Center in 2017 to develop machine learning tools capable of “accurately predicting medical events — such as whether patients will be hospitalized, how long they will stay, and whether their health is deteriorating despite treatment for conditions such as urinary tract infections, pneumonia, or heart failure,” the company said in a blog post.
If data is the 6th vital sign, companies like Google and Amazon will create an IoT of healthcare that likes of which we cannot yet imagine, where the portals we turn for our care and specific services will be Amazon Prime and hospitals powered by Google's AI. Just going to the hospital could eventually mean giving more data to Gooogle. As search became a utility for consumers, all of these GAFMA innovations in this industry will as well.
The future doesn't ask our consent to live in its world, but our data will be mined for profit one way or another.
Welcome to the world of artificial intelligence invading the healthcare sector, lowering costs, saving lives and taking our data in the process.
Reading the Time article and so many others this year, you would think we are inventing utopia with AI. But there's a sinister motivation at the heart of Google's data-hungry play, and doing it in secret like Nightingale shows a covert attempt to undermine consumer privacy.
If data is the new oil, it's data at all costs. To give an Ad-firm our healthcare data makes me feel more than a bit uncomfortable.
Google also published a blog post later in the day (this week) confirming that “Nightingale” is the name of its health project. Google you can have my data, I just don't trust you to do the right thing with it. Google least of all companies, understand the ethical hurdles of what they are starting.
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