Observer investigation reveals UK Biobank opened its biomedical database to insurance firms despite pledge it would not do so
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    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.

    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.

    Prof Yves Moreau, a genetics and AI expert who has worked on projects using data from UK Biobank, said the data-sharing appeared to be a “serious and disturbing breach of trust”.

    Prof Sandra Wachter, an expert in technology and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, said the cases risked eroding the trust of volunteers who “donated their data for a good cause”.

    Flying Troika LLC’s website says it is a “pure research lab” offering “deep larning” solutions in sectors including insurance, pharma, manufacturing and retail.

    The company is understood to have sought genetic data, MRI scans and other information in April 2021, to develop a “novel AI model” that can predict ageing processes.

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