• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Monday, August 25, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Health

Artificial intelligence advances threaten privacy of health data

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
January 3, 2019
in Health
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

Study finds current laws and regulations do not safeguard individuals’ confidential health information

Advances in artificial intelligence have created new threats to the privacy of people’s health data, a new University of California, Berkeley, study shows.

Led by UC Berkeley engineer Anil Aswani, the study suggests current laws and regulations are nowhere near sufficient to keep an individual’s health status private in the face of AI development. The research was published Dec. 21 in the JAMA Network Open journal.

The findings show that by using artificial intelligence, it is possible to identify individuals by learning daily patterns in step data, such as that collected by activity trackers, smartwatches and smartphones, and correlating it to demographic data.

The mining of two years’ worth of data covering more than 15,000 Americans led to the conclusion that the privacy standards associated with 1996’s HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) legislation need to be revisited and reworked.

“We wanted to use NHANES (the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) to look at privacy questions because this data is representative of the diverse population in the U.S.,” said Aswani. “The results point out a major problem. If you strip all the identifying information, it doesn’t protect you as much as you’d think. Someone else can come back and put it all back together if they have the right kind of information.”

“In principle, you could imagine Facebook gathering step data from the app on your smartphone, then buying health care data from another company and matching the two,” he added. “Now they would have health care data that’s matched to names, and they could either start selling advertising based on that or they could sell the data to others.”

According to Aswani, the problem isn’t with the devices, but with how the information the devices capture can be misused and potentially sold on the open market.

“I’m not saying we should abandon these devices,” he said. “But we need to be very careful about how we are using this data. We need to protect the information. If we can do that, it’s a net positive.”

Though the study specifically looked at step data, the results suggest a broader threat to the privacy of health data.

“HIPAA regulations make your health care private, but they don’t cover as much as you think,” Aswani said. “Many groups, like tech companies, are not covered by HIPAA, and only very specific pieces of information are not allowed to be shared by current HIPAA rules. There are companies buying health data. It’s supposed to be anonymous data, but their whole business model is to find a way to attach names to this data and sell it.”

Aswani said advances in AI make it easier for companies to gain access to health data, the temptation for companies to use it in illegal or unethical ways will increase. Employers, mortgage lenders, credit card companies and others could potentially use AI to discriminate based on pregnancy or disability status, for instance.

“Ideally, what I’d like to see from this are new regulations or rules that protect health data,” he said. “But there is actually a big push to even weaken the regulations right now. For instance, the rule-making group for HIPAA has requested comments on increasing data sharing. The risk is that if people are not aware of what’s happening, the rules we have will be weakened. And the fact is the risks of us losing control of our privacy when it comes to health care are actually increasing and not decreasing.”

###

Co-authors of the study are Liangyuan Na of MIT; Cong Yang and Chi-Cheng Lo of UC Berkeley; Fangyuan Zhao of Tsinghua University in China; and Yoshimi Fukuoka of UCSF.

Media Contact
John Hickey
[email protected]
206-459-1803

Related Journal Article

https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/12/21/advancement-of-artificial-intelligence-opens-health-data-privacy-to-attack/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.6040

Tags: Information Management/Tracking SystemsMedical/Scientific EthicsMedicine/HealthRobotry/Artificial IntelligenceSystem Security/HackersTechnology/Engineering/Computer Science
Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

blank

Qingbu Weijing Decoction: Promising Bronchiectasis Treatment Study

August 25, 2025
blank

Assessing Measurement Invariance in Canadian Youth Eating Scale

August 25, 2025

Integrating Health Evidence into Lebanon’s Electoral Platforms

August 25, 2025

Comparative Study: Intracameral Dexamethasone vs. Standard Care

August 25, 2025
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • blank

    Molecules in Focus: Capturing the Timeless Dance of Particles

    142 shares
    Share 57 Tweet 36
  • Breakthrough in Computer Hardware Advances Solves Complex Optimization Challenges

    137 shares
    Share 55 Tweet 34
  • New Drug Formulation Transforms Intravenous Treatments into Rapid Injections

    115 shares
    Share 46 Tweet 29
  • Neuropsychiatric Risks Linked to COVID-19 Revealed

    81 shares
    Share 32 Tweet 20

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Qingbu Weijing Decoction: Promising Bronchiectasis Treatment Study

Assessing Measurement Invariance in Canadian Youth Eating Scale

Integrating Health Evidence into Lebanon’s Electoral Platforms

  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.