Thiruvananthapuram: Data privacy row has come back to haunt the Kerala government after the recent one related to the sharing of COVID-19 health records with the US firm Sprinklr. Documents emerging in the public domain now reveal that the health department of the Kerala government is bound to continue sharing the health records of a million people to a Canadian private agency over the next 10 years.
A agreement on sharing the health data which were collated after a survey was concluded by the state with the Population Health Research Institute (PHRI) of Canada.
The details of the pact are surfacing from different sources amidst the controversy that the public health data collected as part of the survey conducted by the health department were transferred to the PHRI without the nod of the state government or central government.
The survey project is called the Kerala Information of Residents-Arogyam Network or KIRAN.
Along with the sharing of data of 10 lakh people a deal has also been struck to share information from follow-up surveys to be conducted with the same firm, documents reveal.
Further information would be collected every year from the families who were part of the first survey. The documents of the Achutha Menon Center for Health Science Studies, which co-ordinated the study, reveal that there would be follow-up surveys for the next 10 years.
The health department is contending that PHRI can’t access the health data though the survey was carried out with the support of the Canadian agency’s software. But an e-mail of Rajeev Sadanandan, who was the Additional Chief Secretary (Health), that surfaced recently, says that the data would be periodically transferred to the PHRI.
The questionnaire-based survey sourced information relating to the medical history of family members above the age of two, trail of medication, education, job and use of alcohol and tobacco, among others. The authorities concerned have also taken requisite official permission to periodically revisit the families, which were under the purview of study, for the next 10 years.
People who participated in the survey opined that they were let down by the move to part with survey information. The survey officials gave the assurance that the data won’t be disclosed and the information collected would be shared only with project investigators, coordinators and nurses, who were part of the whole exercise, they responded to reports that the data had been shared with the Canadian agency.
