LONDON, May 19 (Reuters) – Google on Friday dismissed a lawsuit brought on behalf of 1.6 million people over medical records provided to the U.S. tech giant by a British hospital trust.
The Royal Free London NHS Trust transferred patient data to Google’s artificial intelligence firm DeepMind Technologies in 2015 in connection with the development of a mobile app designed to analyze medical records and detect acute kidney injury.
Britain’s data protection watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office, said in 2017 that Royal Free, which is part of the public NHS, had misused patient data when it provided the information to DeepMind.
Alphabet Inc’s ( GOOGL.O ) unit Google and DeepMind were sued last year by Royal Free patient Andrew Prismall on behalf of 1.6 million people for alleged misuse of personal information.
In March, the companies argued that the lawsuit was “doomed to fail” because there was no prospect of establishing that the personal information of all 1.6 million plaintiffs had been misused or that they had any expectation of privacy in relation to the information.
Judge Heather Williams ruled on Friday that the case should not proceed, agreeing that the case was “doomed to fail”.
“I conclude that each member of the plaintiff class has no realistic prospect of establishing a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to the relevant medical records,” she said in a written decision.
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