Sign up for our daily briefing
Make your busy days simpler with Axios AM/PM. Catch up on what's new and why it matters in just 5 minutes.
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Denver news in your inbox
Catch up on the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Denver
Des Moines news in your inbox
Catch up on the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Des Moines
Minneapolis-St. Paul news in your inbox
Catch up on the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Twin Cities
Tampa Bay news in your inbox
Catch up on the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Tampa Bay
Charlotte news in your inbox
Catch up on the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Charlotte
Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty
Big Tech, already under a withering spotlight from Congress for mishandling some user data, is elbowing further into health care — a world defined by its privacy pitfalls.
Why it matters: Giant companies have earned regulatory wrist-slaps for fumbling sensitive personal information, but the stakes are much higher for poorly protected health data.
What's happening: Recent moves, some unfolding in secret, show the reach of the companies' ambition — and, in some cases, their lack of preparation for the minefields.
- Last week, the WSJ broke news of an agreement between Google and Ascension, the second-largest health care system in the country, that gave Google access to data from 50 million patients without informing them. The government is investigating the system's privacy protections.
- On Friday, WaPo reported that Google had pulled the plug on a project with the National Institutes of Health in 2017 when NIH warned that the 100,000 X-ray images it was about to publish could identify the patients.
- Apple, which has put health at the center of its products, announced three new research studies for Apple Watch owners — one of which aims to enroll a million women, monitoring them as they go about their daily lives. Doctors say it's still unclear how useful these large-scale studies are.
The big picture: Med tech is a hugely lucrative and fast-growing field, but it's been plagued by setbacks driven in part by a mismatch between can-do engineers and a more deliberate clinical culture.
The bottom line, from Axios' Caitlin Owens: "These companies are entering the health care world because it's clearly a profit bonanza and they want a piece of that money pie."
Go deeper: Americans have big hopes that Big Tech can improve health care