Google recently made a deal with the NHS that will allow its artificial intelligent unit, DeepMind, access to up to 1.6 million private patient records. Scary stuff.

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Google has made agreements with various scientists in the past to understand human health, but this is the first time they are teaming up with the NHS to gain access to such a large amount of sensitive information.

Last February Google announced that the collaboration with the NHS has been made to help them develop a kidney disease monitoring app for hospital personnel.

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Sounds innocent enough right? Well, as Sam Smith from the health data privacy group MedConfidential says:

This is not just about kidney function.

They’re getting the full data.

And when he says full data, he means that the search engine giant will be getting the medical backgrounds of all patients from three major hospitals in London – Chase Farm, Barnet and Royal Free. They will be provided with the health records that pass through each year including the sensitive details of abortion, drug overdose and HIV infection. They even get to know things like who visits the patient. I’m sorry, but what relevance does that have when developing a kidney function app?

Apparently patients have the option to opt out by writing to their doctor, although this does not cover data gathered during present admission and discharge. And under the agreement Google is not allowed to use any of the information gathered for any of its other business ventures. That still doesn’t make this whole thing seem any more secure. I mean, once they have that information, surely they can utilise it in other ways? And why do they need such detailed, sensitive data if they’re only making a kidney app? This whole thing sounds pretty dodgy if you ask me. They already have information on all of our dodgy internet porn searches – surely that’s enough?

For more on Google, check out this video of a Google boss who is so rich, he doesn’t even know how much he gets paid.