US lawmakers question Google about its collection of health-related data provided by Ascension

US Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren along with fellow Senators Richard Blumenthal and Bill Cassidy wrote a letter to Alphabet’s Google on Wednesday to raise questions about its access to the health records of tens of millions of Americans. Warren and Blumenthal, who are Democrats, along with Cassidy, a Republican, were focussed on a business partnership that Google formed with Ascension Health . Ascension, which operates 150 hospitals and more than 50 senior living facilities across the United States, is Google’s biggest cloud computing customer in healthcare, in a deal giving it access to datasets that could help it tune potentially lucrative artificial intelligence (AI) tools. (Also read:  Google’s healthcare project, Nightingale, comes under us congressional committee scrutiny ) [caption id=“attachment_7059551” align=“alignnone” width=“1024”] Warren and Blumenthal, who are Democrats, along with Cassidy, a Republican, were focussed on a business partnership that Google formed with Ascension Health. Image: Reuters[/caption] The lawmakers asked Google to provide information about other health systems which provide information to Google, whether Ascension clients will be allowed to opt out of the project and whether the data be used for advertising, among others. Google said that it was happy to answer questions about the project. (Also read:  Google, Ascension asked to reveal how it is using patient data stored on the cloud ) “We believe Google’s work with Ascension adheres to industry-wide regulations (including HIPAA) regarding patient data, and comes with strict guidance on data privacy, security, and usage,” the company said in an email statement.