I mostly agree with you - healthcare and tech should absolutely be a match made in heaven, but here in the UK it's the ethics and data protection laws which mak

I mostly agree with you - healthcare and tech should absolutely be a match made in heaven, but here in the UK it's the ethics and data protection laws which make that so difficult. Even with explicit consent from patients (and this article states this was not the case), the rules make it very hard to work effectively with the data. I can give a couple of examples. [The 100'000 genomes project](https://www.genomicsengland.co.uk/the-100000-genomes-project/ https://www.genomicsengland.co.uk/the-100000-genomes-project...) is in the process of sequencing 100'000 genomes of patients with cancer and rare disease and will be the largest sequencing project in the world once completed. Because whole genome data can potentially identify a person and give information on conditions they have or might be prone to, their genomic data is seen as confidential. As a result, even with explicit patient permission, the data can only be accessed through a remote desktop onto a machine which does not have internet access, which makes working with some genomic tools (which rely on large databases) very problematic. I understand they're working on this, but it is just an example of the 'inconvenience' of abiding by security rules. Another example, with my own research, is that even with patient consent, the thumbs up from the ethics committee, and being clinically involved with patients (with a corresponding contract with the hospital), I am unable to store patient information on encrypted devices on university computers. Instead this must be stored on NHS computers, even though the analysis occurs on university computers. Having said all of that, there is a way to get really great data from many patients using NHS IT systems - [the million women study](http://www.millionwomenstudy.org/methods/ http://www.millionwomenstudy.org/methods/) successfully did this and have not run into any ethical/regulatory problems. That's because they did it the right way - i.e. it is formally registered as research, permission was asked and received from the regional ethics committee, patients were given information, both by paper and verbally, to ask for consent for the study. Of course this study was run by Oxford University, who, like other universities, know clearly the pitfalls and hoops of conducting research on patients. This is a whole world of bureaucracy (which has come about for good reasons), which tech companies will have to navigate and abide by if they wish to carry out human research.