Project Nightingale - Wikipedia

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2024-09-28 01:30:03

Project Nightingale is a data storage and processing project by Google Cloud and Ascension, a Catholic health care system comprising a chain of 2,600 hospitals, doctors' offices and other related facilities, in 21 states, with tens of millions of patient records available for processing health care data. Ascension is one of the largest health-care systems in the United States with comprehensive and specific health care information of millions who are part of its system. The project is Google's attempt to gain a foothold into the healthcare industry on a large scale.[ 1] Amazon, Microsoft and Apple Inc. are also actively advancing into health care, but none of their business arrangements are equal in scope to Project Nightingale.[ 1] [ 2] [ 3]

In early 2019, Ascension began talks with Google about developing health aggregation software to store and search medical records. The two companies signed a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) business associate agreement, which would allow Ascension to transfer patient data to Google Cloud, and would bar Google from using this data for purposes other than providing services to Ascension.[ 4] Google first mentioned its project with Ascension in a July 2019 earnings call, which said the partnership was meant to "improve the healthcare experience and outcomes."[ 5]