Google has asked the UK’s High Court to throw out a lawsuit brought over the alleged misuse of NHS patient data.

In 2015, the Royal Free London NHS Trust gave patient data to Google-owned AI company DeepMind as it sought to develop an app to detect acute kidney injuries by analysing patients’ medical records.

Andrew Prismall, a Royal Free patient, filed to sue Google last year for alleged misuse of the 1.6 million patients’ data provided to DeepMind.

In court filings seen by Reuters, Anthony White, representing the companies, claimed the majority of patients whose data was given to DeepMind “did not suffer any tangible consequences” of the event.

In separate court filings seen by the news agency, Timothy Pitt-Payne, representing Prismall, said that every patient “had their patient-identifiable medical records transferred ... and therefore suffered the same loss of control”.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data privacy regulator, judged in 2017 that the trust’s provision of 1.6 million patient records to DeepMind “failed to comply” with the Data Protection Act.

In 2018, Nicole Perrin, now former head of Understanding Patient Data - a programme based at the Wellcome Trust – said the ICO’s conclusions would help ensure that new digital technologies can be introduced in an appropriate way to provide better clinical care in future.

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