Mountain View, California-based Google has begun removing people’s private medical records from its Search results.
The internet giant made the change to its removal policies last week, according to The Guardian.
“We want to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible, but there are a few instances where we will remove content from Search,” Google’s policies state.
And now one of those instances is when the “confidential, personal medical records of private people” are involved.
The move is perhaps unsurprising, given that publicly available medical information could result in enormous problems for patients. Leaked records and data breaches can ruin one’s identity for years to come.
Such was the case late last year when a pathology lab in Mumbai, India, accidentally put the records of more than 43,000 people online. The records contained individuals’ names, addresses and HIV blood test results. Some people included in the breach were as young as 17 years old, according to Buzzfeed. Though originally accessible via a simple Google search, the records were later taken down.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
In addition to medical records, Google’s policies claim the company can remove individuals’ national identification numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers and images of signatures from Search.
The latest addition to the list came in 2015, when Google started removing “nude or sexually explicit images that were uploaded or shared without [one’s] consent,” otherwise known as revenge porn.
One key note about the company’s removal policies: Such information can only be pulled from Google Search if an individual specifically requests it, a spokeswoman told Bloomberg.
This new policy deviates slightly from Google’s usual hands-off approach to removing data. Still, the company claims it does not extract certain information — such as dates of birth, addresses and telephone numbers — from its Search results.
Photo: John Sullivan, Getty Images
