Linkedin data breach 202212/14/2023 ![]() The company says insurers work with it to “leverage new sources of data to make risk predictions”. In its application to Biobank, approved in December 2022, the company said it needed data to develop an algorithm to predict diseases and death, using hospital records and smartwatch data to examine the relationship between lifestyle, mental health and biomarkers.Īnother firm given Biobank data, Lydia.ai, is a Canadian “insurtech” firm that wants to give people “personalised and predictive health scores”. One company granted access, ReMark International, is a “global insurance consultancy” that underwrites a million policies a year and lists clients including Legal & General and MetLife. Summaries of the projects published online suggest it included de-identified, participant-level data on diseases, lifestyle and biomarkers. ![]() The exact nature of the data shared with the insurance industry is not clear because Biobank does not routinely publish this and has declined so far to say. will not be given any individual’s information, samples or test results” – repeated in leaflets over a 17-year period – meant to refer to identifiable information, such as that which is linked to a person’s name, rather than to other data about Biobank participants. This included leaflets and consent forms that contained a provision that anonymised Biobank data could be shared with private firms for “health-related” research, but did not explicitly mention insurance firms or correct the previous assurances.īiobank also said commitments that “insurance companies. It said the commitment had been made before recruitment formally began in 2007 and that when Biobank volunteers enrolled they were given revised information. This weekend, Biobank said the pledge – made repeatedly over four years – no longer applied. The promise was also reiterated in several public statements by backers of Biobank, who said safeguards would be built in to ensure that “no insurance company or police force or employer will have access”. In an FAQ section on the Biobank website, participants were told: “Insurance companies will not be allowed access to any individual results nor will they be allowed access to anonymised data.” The statement remained online until February 2006, during which time the Biobank project was subject to public scrutiny and discussed in parliament. When the project was announced, in 2002, Biobank promised that data would not be given to insurance companies after concerns were raised that it could be used in a discriminatory way, such as by the exclusion of people with a particular genetic makeup from insurance. It said this included researchers of all stripes, whether employed by academic, charitable or commercial organisations – including insurance companies – and that “information about data sharing was clearly set out to participants at the point of recruitment and the initial assessment”.īut evidence gathered by the Observer suggests Biobank did not explicitly tell participants it would share data with insurance companies – and made several public commitments not to do so. ![]() The resulting research has yielded major medical discoveries and led to Biobank being considered a “jewel in the crown” of British science.īiobank said it strictly guarded access to its data, only allowing access by bona fide researchers for health-related projects in the public interest. ![]() Set up in 2006 to help researchers investigating diseases, the database contains millions of blood, saliva and urine samples, collected regularly from about 500,000 adult volunteers – along with medical records, scans, wearable device data and lifestyle information.Īpproved researchers around the world can pay £3,000 to £9,000 to access records ranging from medical history and lifestyle information to whole genome sequencing data.
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