A Hippocratic Oath for data? Risks and Rewards for your health data privacy

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The recent news of "Project Nightingale" has brought to light a sensitive topic - privacy of our healthcare data. “Millions of patient records had been copied to Google servers and were viewable by hundreds of Alphabet employees. This was done without the knowledge of the patients or their physicians” notes Dr Piers Nash writing for The Hill.

While there are risks and rewards of health data privacy, a new version of the Hippocratic Oath for health data seems to be in order.

In summary, an ethical framework for the use and sharing of data centers on four pillars:

1. No individual data — even “de-identified” data — should be transferred without full audit and perpetual provenance.

2. Patient consent should be fully revocable at any time.

3. data proceeds should flow to the data owner/custodian. Returns to health systems will improve patient care and the services not-for-profit hospitals can offer.

4. Use data at the source - the hospital and ultimately, with the patient.