
Sloan Kettering’s Deal with Startup Ignites a New Uproar - doctorpangloss
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/health/memorial-sloan-kettering-cancer-paige-ai.html
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paulsutter
Thats nothing compared to the work in China right now. In ten or 20 years, the
west could be permanently behind.

From [https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/data-
sharing-...](https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/data-sharing-
giving-chinese-ai-firms-a-head-start-36039570.html)

> DeepMind, the AI lab of Google's Alphabet, has laboured for nearly two years
> to access medical records... Last month, the top UK privacy watchdog
> declared the trial violates British data-protection laws, throwing its
> future into question.

> Contrast that with how officials handled a project in Fuzhou... The summit
> involved a vast handover of data. At the press conference, city officials
> shared 80 exabytes worth of heart ultrasound videos, according to one
> company that participated. With the massive data set, some of the companies
> were tasked with building an AI tool that could identify heart disease,
> ideally at rates above medical experts. They were asked to turn it around by
> the autumn.

~~~
sulam
I don't think the issue here is so much the data (which is anonymized), but
the conflict of interest. I know conflict of interest is par for the course in
China, but for the individuals who made the decision that this startup should
be given exclusive access to the data to then be given stakes in the startup
is clearly a conflict. Doubling that conflict is the fact that they work for a
non-profit, which has tax-preferred status and also received a stake in the
startup.

Let me make an analogy here: I advise several startups and am given shares in
those companies in return for my time. A few of them make software or sell
solutions that the company I work for could use. At my company I can influence
whether or not we use these startups as a vendor. It is clearly unethical for
me to be involved in any decision that pertains to a company where I hold an
ownership stake. It would also be unethical for me to take an ownership stake
after I was involved in a negotiation with those companies. I would disclose
and recuse myself from any such decision. That's without adding the extra
(legal) wrinkle around non-profit status, which doesn't pertain.

~~~
forapurpose
> which is anonymized

How reliably is the anonymization? Based on very little reading, data can at
least sometime be de-anonymized. If that becomes possible 5 years from now,
what happens then to the data already made public? How will individual's
privacy be protected?

~~~
itronitron
Unless they are in the business of selling advertisements or life insurance,
there is probably very little incentive for them to de-anonymize the data. The
bigger risk with that data is that they don't secure it properly.

------
QML
“The company has an exclusive deal to use the cancer center’s vast archive of
25 million patient tissue slides, along with decades of work by its world-
renowned pathologists.”

In general, the world is better off with more information: why not open source
the data if better cancer diagnosis is the goal?

~~~
itronitron
Reminds me of the time I was browsing through a scrap yard in a large mid-
western city for art supplies and happened across an oil drum filled to the
top with discarded chest x-rays. Kind of disturbing both from the sheer number
of xrays as well as the deformities visible in many of the images.

Point being, hospitals have a very poor track record regarding their disposal
of medical equipment and records so a motivated individual could probably
easily find this data in a recycling center.

------
darawk
Datasets like this need to be public. They're too valuable to be silo'd by
some little AI startup.

~~~
lellotope
My same concern about the ethics of this. I might have felt a little
differently if this AI startup had paid for all of the data collection
proactively (although I would have still had concerns about the exclusivity of
any such agreements to patient access), but as it is this seems unethical.

The biomedical-industrial complex in the US makes my stomach churn. So many
conflicts of interest, rent-seeking, monopolies, and nepotism.

