Google's artificial intelligence unit DeepMind reportedly received medical records of 1.6 million patients on an "inappropriate legal basis."
A letter leaked to Sky News reveals that Professor Stephen Powis, the medical director of the Royal Free Hospital in London, provided the patients' records to Google DeepMind.
The UK's National Data Guardian will inform an ongoing investigation into the legality of the deal between the NHS and DeepMind.
The law in UK ensures that patients records kept confidential and can only be share with the patients consent. The information can also be shared if it is for the purpose of "direct care".
However, the NDG points out that DeepMind was not using the medical records to provide direct care, but to train and test the medical app it has been developing for the NHS.
The app called Streams was developed to identify patients at risk from acute kidney injury that is linked to 40,000 deaths a year in the UK of which a quarter can be prevented.
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