A Facebook Inc. logo is pictured on a desktop computer's display, Milan on March 29, 2018. Photo: Alberto Pezzali/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Facebook explored a data-sharing project with hospitals, now on hold, to profile patients anonymously in order to provide better care, according to CNBC.
Why it matters: Though it promised that no data would identify individual patients by name, Facebook's plan raises a lot of concerns about patient and user privacy. The company has been in hot water in recent weeks after it was discovered that its third-party app tools allowed a researcher to capture user data which was then passed to Cambridge Analytica.
More: The project was led at Facebook by interventional cardiologist Freddy Abnousi, working out of Building 8, the company's secretive unit working on moonshot projects.
A spokesperson told CNBC that the project never went beyond the planning phase.